


Mirrorshards

by SenTheSeventh



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Harm to Children, Humor, Incest, M/M, Mild Gore, Nero did not deserve this, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-DMC5, Sibling Incest, The Sparda are bad at feelings, Though the children don't care
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-01-15 22:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18508732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenTheSeventh/pseuds/SenTheSeventh
Summary: When two children with white hair and demonic strenght are discovered in Redgrave City, Nero is hired to capture them - and possibly untangle the mystery of their origins.What was already a strange situation will only get worse.





	1. Two kids, both alike in savagery...

It was Morrison on the line, his hoarse voice tinged with something careful and perplexed.

“Hello, Nero. You’re free? I’ve got a mission for you.”

“Yeah?”

There was a slight pause, as if Morrison was searching for the right words. Nero wasn’t the kind to worry uselessly, but tension gnawed at his guts as he waited. Usually, Morrison was the straightforward type; hesitation meant complication or very bad news.

“So… Two kids have been spotted near the Redgrave ruins. Let’s say that they’re the kind of 'aggressive' that make them hard to ground, and survivors… or looters have been unable to catch them.”

“Demons?”

“They look human enough, except for the white hair.”

 _Fuck_. Something clenched tight inside Nero.

“… Okay. Gimme the district. I’m going.”

“Sixth, south of the town. Not asking for payment?”

“From refugees? No.”

Morrison chuckled.

“You’re just like Dante. That’s not how you do business, you know? A bigwig among the looters and profiteers that amassed around Redgrave is offering quite a lot for their heads or, barring that, their disappearance. I’ll take care of that, and you take care of the kids.”

Nero mumbled his agreement and hung up. He felt dizzy, his mind compressed by thoughts that couldn’t quite choose between fear, incredulity, anger, hope and… he didn’t know, he didn’t even know if he wanted to know.

“So?” Nico asked, curious.

“We’ve got kids to catch in Redgrave.”

“ _Whaaaat_? Yours? Nero, what will Kyrie say!”

Nico’s levity alleviated part of the fog in his mind, as it always did; Nero half-growled, half-groaned, shaking his head.

“Of course they’re _not_!”

Not that it would ever be possible. He loved Kyrie, he really did, and he wanted to make her happy with all his soul, but physically – something in his body just didn’t cooperate. He could kiss her, he could hug her, he could nap with her and fall asleep with her warmth and floral smell soothing his mind, but he couldn’t really touch her as a lover should – couldn’t give her more than tenderness.

Women just didn’t do it for him. It had taken him getting out of Fortuna to realize it: back in his hometown, he'd despised everyone except Credo and Kyrie. Even now, the reluctantly thankful faces of the survivors made him feel little more than contempt or unease. Outside, though, no-one cared about his orphan origins or a possibly unwed mother - actually, no-one had to _know_. He'd been able to look at the world in a new way, and...

Yeah. Kyrie was kind and generous and accepting and he loved her, but he didn't _want_ her, didn't lust for her, wouldn't even dare to if he could: she was too pure to be wanted in this way. She was more than his best friend, as close to a wife as he’d ever have, but they had both agreed that they’d... also love outside of their bond.

Not that Nico needed to know, if only because she'd tease him relentlessly about every man they met if she did.

“Yeah, right, right, they're not yer kids,” Nico drawled. “Do they have four arms like their dad?”

“They’ve got white hair.”

For the first time since he’d met her, Nico looked entirely stunned: mouth gaping, cigarette dropped and, hands freezing on the wheels.

“What the _fuck_ , they’re really–"

"Nico, watch the fucking road!"

She barely swerved in time to avoid a streetlight, the van rattling and screetching at the impromptu drifting.

“Watch where you’re driving, you public enemy!” Nero shouted at her.

“Don’t hit me with that kind of news when I’m drivin’, dumbass! What are they? _Whose_ are they?”

“I don’t know! I’ll ask them when we’ll find them, okay?”

Nico darted a careful glance toward him, her tone dropping less frantic and more serious. “You think you’ve got brothers?...”

Nero felt his whole body tense at the question, fists clenching until it hurt. He didn't answer. He couldn't.

“Well,” Nico finally said, “I guess it’s time to show you how fast this baby can go, huh?”

She did, and terror drowned out angst in Nero’s mind as he realized that what he thought was the van’s top speed was actually its cruising speed.

 

 

***

 

 

They arrived a few hours later. Nero took the time to silently thanks whatever divinity had kept them in one piece: he'd never really believed in the Savior, even less so now that he knew the big guy was technically his grandpa, but he felt ready to believe in miracles when Nico drove at her top speed.

Nico parked the van and grinned at him. “Go get ‘em, tiger! Well, _daddy_ tiger.”

“Nico...”

“What? You prefer _big bro_?”

“That’s not funny!”

Nero's voice was harsher than it needed to be, tension buzzing between his shoulder blades. Nico fished out a smoke from her pocket and lit it. She knew when she'd pushed him too far.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. Good luck with the hunt, Nero! Don't scare the kids.”

“Remind me which one of us actually made children cry?”

Nico was bad with kids. There was room for only one brat in her universe, and that was her.

“First, they didn't really _cry_ and secondly, the ones at your orphanage don’t count," she objected with the wounded dignity of an offended nobleman. "They’re so used to Kyrie, anyone who ain’t a saint scare them.”

“ _I_ don’t.”

“That’s because you’re in Kyrie mode when you’re there. Lovebirds!”

Nnico cackled. Nero rolled his eyes at her and turned heels, trying to take in the territory he'd have to cover. It had been months since the fall of the Qliphoth, but Redgrave City was barely more than ruins. The government’s help had mainly kept to tents and supplies for the relocated: demon extermination efforts were few and too careful. The city looked like the apocalyptic painting of some mad artist – a mess of putrefied rubble and half-dispersed human husks, strange colors mixing with the grays of a previously ordinary city. Some buildings were almost intact, standing among disaster like stern-faced witnesses.

The good work of his dad. Or, rather, of half his dad. Sometimes, Nero tried to mentally mash Urizen and V together like some kind of conceptual playdough, attempting to create an approximation of whom Vergil might really be: half hollow, passionless drive for power and half quiet, poetry-loving goth that wasn’t afraid to dance like a dork while his summons skewered their preys.

And who looked _good_ dancing like a dork.

God, Nero felt so messed up.

Anyway, where were the kids? And how was he supposed to find them in the middle of that wreck? He should have asked Morrison for more details, but he'd been too rattled to think about it. Flying would give him a better view, but was sure to freak them out… He would be better off walking, for now.

He started exploring the area, dressing a mental card of the place as he went. A few demons still roamed, hidden away in nests that would have required an entire army to smoke out. Audacious looters and various gangs looking to escape the eyes of the law were also part of the local fauna; Nero met a few, who were all pretty eager to volunteer information once he’d kicked their asses.

There were, indeed, two white-haired demon kids who defied all efforts to capture them. They were aggressive, cunning, and they stole food and more importantly weapons, which was fan-fucking-tastic - the only thing easier to catch than two demon kids was two _armed_ demon kids. The only bright side of the whole mess was that they attacked solitary travelers like Nero. He thanked his informants by looting them to teach them peace and virtue: Kyrie probably wouldn’t have approved, but Nero didn’t pretend to be a saint and he felt like the whole thing was going to cost him more than whatever the pay was going to be.

 

***

 

Nero had been searching for two days, planning and preparing for countless ambushes configurations, when he saw the kids or, rather, one of them: somewhere between seven and ten years old, stark white hair, bright blue eyes, naked feet, too-big torn clothes and the kind of stare that couldn’t kill but sure wished it did. The… demon? was busy going through a pile of trash, putting away anything that looked remotely metallic, a knife resting near his right hand. His face was dark and focused – sometimes, he remembered to throw a glance around him, but he was mostly absorbed by his searching. Nero’s first reflex was to grab him with his Devil Breaker before he was spotted, but the other wasn’t there and the thing really did look like a normal, possibly half-demon child –

A small, thin silhouette jumped on the boy from a window above, landed on his back and slashed him with a fucking machete. A cry of pain tore through the air, echoing throughout the empty streets.

Nero had witnessed quite a lot of carnage now, but seeing a kid get killed froze him. The attacker rose; two icy eyes met Nero’s, cold in a pale, hard face.

A pale, hard, _childish_ face who contorted in shock when it spotted him, vulnerability melting away any trace of harshness:

“Father?”

Nero had never fainted in his whole life, but he felt himself grow numb for a second, blood buzzing in his ears. The kid recovered before he did, eyes narrowing:

“No.”

He sharply pulled his weapon out from his… clone? Brother ?, shook the red ichor from his blade and stepped forward.

“Leave at once.”

Trying to snap out of shock, Nero attempted to wire snatch the boy – not quickly enough, though, his whole being reluctant to use violence towards something that looked so young and vulnerable. The demon dodged by a hairbreadth, grabbed his companion by the back of his torn clothes and threw him away from Nero:

“Dante! Run!”

What the _fucking fuck fucking fuck_ what the helling fuck _FUCKWHAT_? Nero’s reaction was less an attack and more of a reflexive, frantic attempt to grab at anything that would make sense in his current fucking life and, of course, he missed the child, because nothing existed that could possibly justify this entire current madness, apart from a fever dream which probably was killing him right now because _WHAT THE FUCK_. The two kids each took off in an opposite direction, including the one who was fucking supposed to be dead. Nero ran after “Dante” out of sheer instinct but lost him quickly, the boy shaking him off easily in his hometurf – that and Nero was really having a hard time thinking straight when everything was so, so, _weird_ was not a strong enough word, and he didn’t have V anymore to ask for some grandiloquent synonym and _fuck_.

In the end, Nero found himself alone in the ravaged streets of Redgrave City. Sometimes, he wished that he drank or smoked so that he’d have at least something to turn to in situations like these, but he didn’t and he was reduced to kicking rubble hard enough to crack a wall.

What the _fuck_.

Okay. Rewinding. If he took only facts into account, he had met two kids with genetic markers that were consistent with the Sparda bloodline: white hair and pale eyes, a human appearance but incredible regenerative abilities. They looked a lot like each other, but Nero had only seen them briefly, from afar, and they were still young, so they might not have been real twins.

And one of them was called Dante.

Okay. This still made no goddamn sense at all, but at least, Nero had established all the nonsensical facts in proper order and he was feeling more prepared to face life. What would Dante do in his place? Probably shrug and move on toward the mission. His… uncle (the word was still strange in his mind, tinged with incredulity and lame, embarrassing pride mixed with happiness) was the kind of man who prioritized action before explanation when he’d got a target.

So. How could Nero catch the kids? They were old enough to be careful. He remembered the boy who was searching for metallic objects in the trash. Maybe he could get them by leaving booby-trapped weapons? Nico could probably make him something with sleeping gas and an alarm system, but the kids might be immune to chemicals, and with the demons and looters still roaming around… Better to call her and ask about her ideas. She was the mad inventor; she’d probably brainstorm him something more appropriate than what his neophyte mind could muster.

The first phone Nero found was fried, so he had to search for another. It turned out harder than he'd thought, and night was almost falling when he heard a call from up above.

“Eyh, dude!”

One of the kids was waving at him from the fourth story of a dilapidated hotel, face pale in the dark canvas of a broken window. Nero stopped, briefly entertaining the idea of attempting to snatch him – but the angle and distance made it too hazardous and this was too much of a unique occasion to talk, maybe even to gain his trust.

“Hello… Kid.”

“What are you?”

Nero knew the harshness in the boy’s voice: it felt like a throwback from when he was at the orphanage, anger coiled deep in his throat, toughness shouted at the world to hide any weakness. He hesitated just for a moment before opting for honesty.

“I’m a half-demon.”

It was difficult to see the kid’s expression at this distance, but Nero thought his eyes widened. Fingers clenched on the windowsill, the boy leaned forward before catching himself:

“Show proof!”

Nero sighed. It was harder to switch to his other form away from the thrill of combat, but his wings came easier – a burst of energy and then the strange sensation of two new, yet entirely familiar members.

“That’s good enough for you?”

“Woah, yeah. Who’s your demon parent? Is it your mom or your dad?”

There was a bit more curiosity in the bark, this time, and, yes – something that sounded like… hope?

“It’s my dad... Vergil.”

There was a short silence, then the child burst out laughing:

“What! My brother is named the same!”

 _Oh my fucking Savior_ , Nero thought with what could not be called “calm.” He almost missed “Dante”’s frantic “shit” and the way the boy pressed his hands against his mouth – another point of interrogation that he would file with the horde that was currently howling at the door.

“Okay, and… what's your demonic parent, kid?”

“How do you know... Huh, if I’m a half-demon? ‘Coz I’m not.”

“Well, I saw you recover from a machete slash.”

Sullen silence answered him. The kid crossed his arms:

“Okay. Yeah, I’m not human.”

“Who’s your demon parent? I’ve told you mine, it’s only polite you tell me yours.”

For some reason, the boy climbed on the windowsill to answer, one leg dangling outside. Nero was used enough to taking care of kids that all his instincts were screaming, but he forced himself to impassibility; "Dante" looked like the kind of hothead who would do exactly the opposite of what he was told just to prove he could.

“I don’t know,” the kid said in a carefully careless tone. "What are you doing here?”

The lie couldn't have been more obvious, but better not push it for now.

“I’m hunting bad demons and I’ve heard that there were children who looked like me in the city, so I came.”

“You hunt demons?”

Curiosity had definitively outweighed hostility, now. Maybe Nero could solve this madness without spending days searching for ways to trap two violent demon children.

“Yeah. I’m a professional hunter.”

The boy took a moment to ponder the question.

“I wanna be one, too.”

“Want me to teach you?”

The child stared at him.

“Why?”

“Because we may be of the same blood,” Nero answered honestly.

For a second, the kid didn’t move, then he got up on the windowsill, contorting himself to stand as straight as possible. Nero struggled not to shout at him, stress burning his stomach.

“What’s your name, old guy?”

“Nero. Yours?”

“Tony.”

Dante’s pseudonym back when Morrison had met him. What the hell?

“Okay, Tony. Want to come down?”

“No way, not yet! Plus… I’m not leaving my brother.”

“Vergil?”

“Yeah, him. He won’t go with you. He told me to be careful of you.”

It figured that the kid named after Nero’s father would be the most fucking suspicious of him. When the two assholes came back from their little vacation thing in the Underworld, he was going to punch Vergil _so hard_.

(He was going to punch Vergil _and_ Dante so hard. Bastards, leaving him behind.)

“Why?”

Tony shrugs.

“He doesn’t trust you.”

“I didn’t do anything suspicious, did I?”

“He said… Eh. Anyway, he doesn’t like outsiders.”

“Anything I can do to earn your confidence, then?”

“I dunno. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Do so, kid. I have pizza in my van, and believe me, it’ll taste better than whatever you’re eating right now.”

 _Great, Nero._ _Tell_ _the child you’re trying to bring with you_ _that you’ve got food in your van_ _. He totally won’t think you’re a pedophile_.

“Touché,” Tony says, exaggerating his French accent. “I’m still not coming, though. Can’t you impress Vergil or whatever? Do something cool, I dunno, recite him poetry or stuff while you’re cutting walls.”

Nero stopped breathing. He was aware that air should have been entering his lungs: they just didn’t want to open up anymore. Or he didn’t want them to, because the whole situation was too fucked-up to be anything else than a symptom of his slow descent into madness.

“ _Yeah_ , I know, that’s _lame_. He’s in looove with his old books and... stuff.”

Jealousy was so obvious in Tony’s voice that Nero would have smiled if he hadn’t been busy screaming internally. He clenched his jaw and managed to choke out a semblance of noise:

“Huh. Yeah. Does he, huh, like Blake?”

“I dunno. I hate poetry,” Dante affirmed in the kind of tone usually reserved to statements such as “I detest crime” or “I despise cowards”.

“OK. I see.”

“Yeah.”

There was a silence. Nero didn’t feel able to fill it for now.

“Well, Nero, I’m off! I owe a few stabs to Vergil, so I’m going to give them back with interest. Don’t go too far, okay? I wanna know where I can find you.”

“What are you gonna do…?”

“I’m playing strategic this time. Imma rush him, but _when he doesn’t expect it_.”

The kid was grinning ear to ear, proud of himself, and Nero’s most moral instincts rebelled:

“Listen-"

No, no shouting at the volatile half-demon boy. Not for as long as Nero was trying to win him over.

"You know, you shouldn’t fight with your brother. What if you kill him?”

Tony shrugged and, thank fuck, finally left the windowsill for the safety of the inside.

“Don’t worry, we’re big boys. We’ve got the situation under control.”

“If you say so, Tony. Just – be careful until I, huh, gain Vergil’s trust, okay?”

“I told you it’s fine!” The kid exclaimed, irritated. “Come on!”

He disappeared into the shadow of the window, off to skewer his brother. Nero flew until he was high enough to spot the next phone, landed heavily and dialed Kyrie's number; she picked up quickly, her soft voice a music to his tired ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Kyrie. It’s Nero. Huh… I think I’ve just met the clones of my father and his brother as children. They’re running around massacring each other and they’re no more than eight or ten years old and I feel like I’m going nut…”

He stopped, at a loss for words. She didn't answer.

“Kyrie?”

Silence lasted a second more before Kyrie spoke, her sweet intonations snapping into a Nicoism that hit Nero like a truck:

“… What the _hell_?”

He felt so, so very tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the read! <3 As usual, I'm open to any critiques.


	2. The boy and the ghost

“What the fuck,” Nico said.

Nero fervently nodded in approval, wolfing down the curry they had prepared for the evening. She fiddled with her plate, looking pensive.

“So there are copies of lil’ Dante and lil’ Vergil runnin’ round Red Grave, and your father already was a pain in the ass when he was small. ‘Course I can make traps or some mighty fine weapons to catch ‘em, but it’s gonna need a few tries to work, so... Either you commit to the trust thang, or ya brute force it – one or the other. What’s it gonna be, mister Supernanny?”

Nero grimaced and took another bite, giving himself a few seconds to think. Part of him wanted to say _fuck it_ and rush after the kids, diplomacy be damned: he’d never been good at pleasantries before and he was aware of his short temper. The other one, the reasonable one, the almost-worthy-of-Kyrie one, knew that gaining Dante’s friendship was probably his best bet. He just couldn’t imagine himself fighting a child, or using his Devil Breakers on them – that, and Red Grave was a labyrinth of ruins where the twins could hide indefinitely.

"Earning their trust is the safest way for now. No traps.”

“Boo! Quitter!”

“You’re just pissed because you can’t play mad scientist.”

“Maybe I jus’ wanted to tell Kyrie how you made two kids cry,” Nico grinned.

“You’ve got some creepy dreams, Doctor Frankenstein. Anyway, trust me, they don’t seem like the crying kind.”

“Ah, but ya know what they say about devils –”

“Shut up!”

They bantered until Nero called it a night – he always slept earlier than Nico, a habit he’d retained from Fortuna. Of course, she mocked him as a country boy, but he took his revenge in the morning, when she didn’t stop bumping into things until her third coffee.

Something woke Nero up in the middle of an especially disturbing dream where Trish was making cookies for Kyrie in a weirdly sexual way. He was trying to make his own, but failing because Trish had thought about adding almonds and he hadn’t, and a terrible, stupid sadness was still eating away at his heart when a loud, rhythmic noise woke him up. Something or _someone_ was hitting the side of the van; the sound, metallic and irregular, was a pain in the ears.

“Ghngnnn,” Nico groaned – some hoarse abomination that he was luckily familiar with, else he’d already be searching for the demon that had snuck inside.

“Relax, I’m gonna check it out.”

“Takeuh debulraker.”

“You’ll have to run that by me again.”

“Reaker!” She half-barked, half-mumbled resentfully.

“Oh! _Take a Devil Breaker_ , right. Don’t worry and go back to sleep, _Supernanny_ will protect your dreams.”

“Nghfssole.”

Some vengeful part of Nero really enjoyed half-comatose Nico, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. Shaking off the last remain of sleep, he grabbed his weapons before he left.

Outside, the night was bright and desolate, ruins and shadows further emphasized by the moonlight. Still hitting the wall of the van with the handle of his combat knife, “Tony” gave Nero the cockiest grin.

Nero gaped at him.

“Hi, Nero!”

“What the _fu_ –the he–what are you doing here?”

“You can swear in front of me, you know, I’m not a _baby_.”

“Okay, okay. So, what are you doing here?”

“V’s asking for you.”

It was as if a truck had run through Nero, tearing away his guts and a good chunk of his brain. He gripped Red Queen’s handle hard enough that every ridge imprinted into his palm, his thoughts a scattered mess of disbelief and anxiety.

V?

He felt like “ _what the fuck_ ” was becoming his catchphrase. A summary of his current existence. The banner of his new life philosophy.

The child looked at him, his curiosity obvious and candid. He seemed much younger when he wasn’t posturing. “What’s the big deal?”

“I... thought he was –”

Nero stopped, searching for the right word. _Absorbed_? _Dissolved_? _Completed_?

“… Dead.”

Tony’s face tightened, pain clouding his eyes and clenching his jaw. Too-thin hands clasped the handle of his knife until he forced himself to talk.

“Well, he’s not good at all. So you’re going to help him. He said you would. That I had to bring you to him. You're gonna help, right?”

 _He said you would_? Did Nero look like that much of a sucker? Of course he did. Because he _was_ going to follow the kid even though this couldn’t be anything but a trap. Someone had created a version of V and the childish simulacra of Nero's... Nero's father and uncle. Powerful demons seemed capable of creating demonic doubles. Trish had been shaped into the image of Dante and Vergil’s mother, hadn’t she?

(So that meant that every time she posed sultrily in revealing clothes – that was to say, all the time – he was basically looking at the sexy clone of his own grandma.

He often tried not to think about that.)

Yet. The kid sounded sincere. And... _V_.

“I’ll try to help," Nero promised Tony. "Just give me time to get some gear, alright? You want food for the trip? Fruit, cookies?”

This close, it was impossible to miss the gauntness of Tony’s childish face – and the hunger that lit up in his eyes at the offer.

“Yeah! Cookies!”

Ah, Dante’s unique relationship with nutrition. As least, this version of him was a kid: he had an excuse.

“I’m bringing some, then. Wait outside, I’ll be right back.”

Nico barely stirred when Nero came back. He wrote her a note: “ _Checking out a lead, brb. Move the van and call the girls if I’m not back 2morrow morn._ ” Then, he grabbed food and weapons and left.

“You ready?” Tony asked from the pile of rubble he had climbed.

“Yeah. Want an apple?”

“Nah. Where are the cookies?”

Nero threw the pack at him. “If you’re still hungry after this, try the apple. It’ll be more filling.”

“Yeah, but it’s not as good.”

“So eat it first, then the rest, so you can still have the taste of cookies afterwards.”

Tony pondered the topic with appropriate gravitas, but shook his head. “Cookies first!”

“Your loss, kid. So, where are we going?”

“This way, old man!”

"'Old man', seriously?"

"You're at least _thirty_."

"Twenty-five!"

Tony's noise of contempt made his opinion quite clear: Nero was still an antique. The young hunter restrained the urge to ruffle his hair and followed.

Tony led him through ravaged streets and crumbled passageways, barely chewing on his food before he swallowed. Unsurprisingly, he turned toward Nero when he finished, looking hopeful.

“Hey, Nero, you got more?”

“Sorry, Tony, I only got an apple.”

“ _Urgh_... Okay.”

“That’s the way you ask for something?”

The kid grimaced dramatically and rolled his eyes. “ _Pleaaaase_.”

Nero grinned and gave him the fruit. A dutiful “thanks” rewarded him before Tony chomped down on it with the ravenous hunger.

They walked through the night, his guide leading the way with a complete absence of fear. Nero had forgotten how odd it felt to travel across an empty city, any human noise – voices, steps, the hum of engines, electric static, televisions blaring – replaced by terrible silence. There weren’t even any animals; beasts, cleverer than men, had deserted the demon-corrupted land. Tony, however, strode as if he owned the place, climbing over debris, pretending to negotiate the edge of a hole-riddled sidewalk like a tightrope artist, flicking loose boards as he passed them by – a living crux of energy.

A child playing around in ruins, a combat knife in his hand and lacerations in his clothes from where criminals, monsters and his own goddamn brother had briefly wounded him.

“How old are you, Tony?”

“Eight.”

Nero swore quietly. The kid grinned. “You said ‘fuck’!”

“Yeah, thanks for pointing that out.”

“I do, too. All the time!”

The boy looked so proud and defiant that Nero really didn’t know how to answer; the “ _You should be ashamed_ ” agenda was hard to push when he had already dropped a few F-bombs in front of Tony. He believed in consistency.

“Congrats?”

The faint praise earned him a look of glowing approval. “V doesn’t like it. He doesn’t say it, but I see him wince every time I swear.”

“Well, as long as you don’t do that in front of my girlfriend, I guess it’s fine.” _Sorry, Kyrie. It’s too late to convert this one to “shucks” and “drat”._

“ _Whaaat_ , you have a girlfr –”

They had both heard it at the same time from a nearby street — the strange shuffling noises that could belong neither to beast nor man. Tony briskly turned to grin at Nero, teeth glinting like fangs under the night lights. His eyes were wide and dark, hate and bloodlust burning like wildfire across the pale canvas of his face.

“Time to work, mister professional hunter!”

Tony didn’t wait for an answer before he started running, shouting with defiant, wrathful glee. Nero’s spectral arms yanked him back instantly, keeping him suspended above ground, and the boy struggled to free himself. “What the heck – the fuck? Let me go, Nero!”

“I’m not letting you fight when I can do the job, okay?”

The kid shouted in sheer outrage, which Nero had expected, and used his free hand to stab him in the arm, which Nero had _not._ His grip reflexively tightened as he almost smashed the boy on the ground, restraining himself at the last moment. Tony attempted to hit him again and he clenched his teeth against the pain, bringing him closer to his other two arms so he could take the knife away.

“Are you fucking insane?”

“I want to fight! You can’t make me not fight!”

At the edge of his vision, Nero saw the demons they'd heard: twelve haphazard melanges of giant insects and rotting corpses skittering toward them.

“You’re a kid! It’s my role as an adult to protect you!”

“I want to fight!” Tony screamed, struggling in full bloodthirsty temper-tantrum mode. What would Kyrie do to reason with him? A lot of things that Nero wouldn’t, and now wasn’t the time for a one-on-one lesson on demon hunting safety. He just checked that he was gripping the kid well enough that he wouldn’t get bitten or scratched, pressing him against his back as he equipped a Devil Breaker. Acting with all four of his arms at once to do anything other than punching or clawing still felt strange, a part of his brain trying to deal with the extra members as phantom sensations or very weird multitasking.

Luckily, Nero was just about to throw himself in combat, so everything was going to fall back into place.

Ignoring Tony’s struggles against his back, Nero grinned and signaled the demons to approach:

“Thanks for coming, guys! I needed some stress relief. Just try to last for more than a few seconds, okay?”

And then – glorious adrenaline.

The demons were _so slow_ in comparison to Nero and it was _great_ , power screaming in his vein, sparkling in his muscles like electricity, inhuman flesh splitting like paper under his blade. Tony made him just slightly off balance but it didn’t really matter when pain was but a brief flare of frustration, a mistake quickly erased by forever-regenerating flesh.

 _Power_. He cut and shot through the rabble, snatching them and punching them, jumping to his full strength and raining death as he willed. Why had he ever been ashamed of having demon blood?

 _Power_. Grotesque bodies exploding in bursts of dust, red orbs sprayed around like bloody fireworks. He could feel the rise of his power compared to just a few months ago, the terrible efficiency of techniques polished on the battlefield.

 _Power_. They fell one after the other and it was _so easy_ and Nero loved it _so much_ , taunting and attacking in turn, air rushing around him as he ran, jumped, flew – pushing his body’s limits again and again as he unleashed his strength. Exhilaration sang in his mind like a victory anthem.

When the last demon fell, frustration rose within Nero, briefly, as he sought for other targets – noises that he could run after, odd shapes or movement in the darkness. Then the beast inside him calmed down enough that the human could fully catch up, and remorse gripped him for a moment.

 _That_ was what he couldn’t tell Kyrie – the bloodlust, the shameful ecstasy, the ugly parts of himself from which she had to be protected. She was too pure to understand. He loved her too much to want her to understand.

On his back, Tony had stopped struggling. For a brief, awful moment, Nero feared that he’d gotten hurt.

“Tony? You okay?” He asked, bringing the kid in front of him.

A sense of relief washed over him when he didn’t see any new holes in the boy’s rags. He put him down gently; Tony instantly straightened to seem taller, crossing his arms. “You suck,” he mumbled sullenly.

“Love you too, pal.”

Tony glared at him and Nero was hit by a sense of painful familiarity. He knew that defiance and that bitter anger; they had been his, a few years prior – they still were, sometimes. The burning frustration not only to lose to another, but to realize precisely the distance that separated them. Fighting Dante in Fortuna, finding himself pinned to the floor by the man he thought he had vanquished; following his shadow through the years as the demon hunter pummelled lords of hell in mere minutes; seeing Dante treat his victories as expected mundanities while Nero was still feeling the limits of his skills and experience.

It felt strange to be on the other side, and Nero didn’t know how to react.

“If you want, I’ll teach you how to do all of that,” he said awkwardly.

Tony’s glare seemed to soften a bit; the kid watched him curiously, eyes glued to his Devil Breaker.

“Even how to make my arm disappear?”

“No. That’s… more my special power. But you’ll get yours. You’re going to be able to transform into a pretty cool demon in a few years.”

Tony stared at him, distracted from his resentment. “You’re going to teach me?”

“I can try. It’ll probably come from” – _distress –_ “combat, though.”

“Huh.”

The boy looked around them, then threw a wistful glance at the knife that Nero had tucked away in his belt. “You should have let me fight. They were _mine_.”

“It’s an adult’s job to protect children, kid. Even if they can take care of themselves.”

Tony opened his mouth, then closed it and turned away.

“I want my knife back,” he mumbled.

His voice was smaller than usual. Nero caught up to him and complied.

“Just don’t stab me again, huh?”

“Can’t make any promises,” Tony grinned.

“That’s the spirit.”

They walked for another hour before they arrived at what had probably been some kind of very fancy official building, and was now a very fancy ruin. Wrought iron gates distorted by inhuman flames still protected a hole-riddled court; beyond the grand broken glass doors awaited red-carpeted stairs spotted with darker shades of blood. Nero briefly glanced behind the reception counter. His reflection looked back at him, grim and careful in the shadows.

“So, V’s in here?”

When would the trap close? Right now or far later, when he’d have introduced the fake V to Trish and Lady?

“Yeah, he’s upstairs. You’re going to see, we made him an awesome room!”

“ _We_?”

“Yeah, me and Vergil.” Tony scowled. “Vergil likes him enough that he accepts working with his _stuuupid_ brother for his sake.”

“Vergil calls you stupid?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s a huge jerk. An _asshole_.” There was vengeful satisfaction in the kid’s intonations; _someone_ was really taking advantage of the fact that nobody could forbid him from swearing anymore. “You have a brother, Nero?”

“Nope.”

“You’re lucky. They suck. I _hate_ having one.”

Tony’s voice dripped with bitter, poisonous hurt. Nero patted his shoulder, feeling the boy startle at the touch. “What did he do?”

“Everything!” The kid waved for emphasis, climbing the stairs with renewed energy. “He just pisses me off so much! He’s mean and he doesn’t care and I hate him!”

“Sounds like a pain,” Nero nodded, knowing from experience that the better thing to do was to acquiesce and listen. Usually, kids chose Kyrie as a confidant, but the most temperamental favored him; they were ashamed to vent their worst instincts to her, while they felt kinship in Nero.

“He _is_. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him...”

There was raw grief in Tony’s voice, barely wrapped in anger. How awesome to know that his father was an asshole even as a eight-year-old! Nero didn’t try to pick up the conversation after that, nursing the bitterness that coiled around his own heart. They climbed to the sixth story in silence, jumping over missing steps and the occasional debris.

“There were weird human-shaped dust statues in here,” Tony informed him. “Still see ‘em in the city from time to time. They look gross but they crumble when you touch them, it’s fun!”

The boy didn't know…? Nero filled the fact as a question to ponder later, when he wouldn’t be focused on the trap. Tony preceded him, pushing open two carved doors miraculously spared by ruin; a long corridor followed, human tracks still visible on the dusty parquet floor. Small candelabra hung in the darkness, useless now that the electricity had gone out.

A claws-marked door stood at the end of the hall. Tony knocked, straightening.

“Yes?”

Nero froze, numbness biting at his guts. He had expected the voice, of course. He just hadn’t known it would affect him so much.

“The guy is here, V!”

“Let him in… Tony. Thank you.”

V’s voice was precisely the same than when they – when he – before he… had joined back with Urizen: branded by weakness and pain, struggling for evenness. Or Nero’s imagination was playing tricks on him, putting a damsel in distress tag over someone who’d never needed one and who, right now, was probably no more than a demonic doppelganger.

Tony opened the door wide, smiling at him. “I’ll be next door. Knock when you're finished!”

Nero nodded and entered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credits to the awesome [Sub_textual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual) for her editing work! Go read her now ♥ and thank you very much for reading my fic, "Nero's life is very hard and he doesn't deserve this."


	3. A ghost's truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once more, this chapter is brought to you by to the amazing [Sub_textual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual), who tirelessly edited this into something legible!
> 
> Thanks to everybody for their kudos and lovely comments, and I hope you keep enjoying the read <3 !

The fake V looked so real it hurt.

He was sitting on a miraculously intact sofa. The weak light that seeped through the dusty window threw into sharp relief the white of his hair and the paleness of his cracked skin, the black of his clothing melting into the darkness of the room. He was propped up by pillows, sickness carving out his sharp features, creeping through the exhaustion that pervaded his thin body. His bony hands were crossed over his cane, shoulders bowed under an invisible weight, head slanted tiredly against the backrest.

He wore weakness like a crown of thorns, half-lidded eyes still unquestionably proud under a mantle of humility. Familiarity gripped Nero’s guts more cruelly than any flesh wound.

“Hello, Nero. Long time no see… I suppose.”

Nero clenched his fists. “Hello to you too, V—” He paused, and then corrected himself. “Vergil. Fancy seeing you here after you fused back into my father.”

V’s eyes widened, mouth briefly agape.

“Your...?”

Nero took a step forward, curbing the urge to grab the bastard.

“What, so you forgot I knew? Tell me, were you aware I was your _own son_ before you tore off my arm? Or did you figure that out later, when you asked for my help to resurrect Vergil?”

V’s lips opened a few times, as if searching for the right words. He looked at his hand and unclenched it slowly, finger by finger, before he closed it again.

“You seemed to take after Dante...”

“That’s not a fucking answer!”

Nero hadn’t come for this. It wasn’t even the real V. Words were just stupidly spilling out of his mouth and he hated it — hated the rush of blood in his head and the angry warmth that drowned his ears. If V had a puppeteer, they were probably laughing themselves to death.

V’s eyes met his own, dark and intent. He faked confusion so fucking well.

“Nero... I didn’t know.”

That wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, until Nero could drag out the whole ugly truth from Vergil’s lips. He had to stop now. He _really_ had to stop now. His breathing was a storm barely contained in the prison of his ribs, his thoughts a hot mess bleeding directly into his veins.

“ _Nero_ ,” V repeated. “ _You must listen to me_. I didn't know. You’ve just informed me.”

Nero had never understood what it was about V’s voice that had always caught his attention and pushed him toward instinctive obedience. Right now, everything in his blood called for rebellion, but the small part of him that was still able to parse logic clung to the words like an anchor. _I didn’t know_. Maybe it was a lie, but he had to calm down, stay focused. He wasn’t Dante; he couldn’t always disarm traps with raw power. He had to think. Nero forced himself to breathe, V’s eyes boring into him.

“I don’t believe you.”

A wry hint of a smile creased V’s cheek. Nero’s temper flared again at the sight.

“Well… That will make this conversation difficult. I have a handful of absurdities to show you; I understand you saw two of them already.”

“The kids.”

“Yes. Dante and Vergil.”

Nero almost waited for V to continue, but he just didn’t have the patience for dramatic pauses anymore. Why couldn’t the man be forward for _once_? Especially when Nero was so obviously struggling to keep his calm?

“What’s with them, V?”

“That is… something I am unable to answer at the moment.”

“ _You—_ ”

“Because I don’t have the faintest idea.”

“Bullshit!”

“Yet, it’s true. Sit down, Nero. Please.”

Nero crossed his arms. V closed his eyes, his face slipping easily into an emotionless mask, before looking at him once more. “I see. May I talk?”

“Explain everything. Clearly.”

There it was again — V’s asymmetrical smile, drawing out his cracked lips — yet not quite reaching the cold green eyes that pinned Nero in place. He should have been in a position of superiority standing up, looking down at V, but instead he felt awkward and stumbling, like he was the one who had to explain himself.

“ _Clearly_ might be beyond my current comprehension of the situation. I remember… coming back to Urizen, and then — there’s a void. I have no idea what Vergil did afterwards. I saw that the Qliphoth has disappeared; I hope he had a hand in it.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Annoyance flashed in V’s eyes at being interrupted, but he pinched his lips and answered. “I can recall… sensations. Awareness first, being… displaced, or shaped roughly into existence. Then, a moment later, ‘ _into the dangerous world I leapt’…_ or was thrown.”

“Thrown?”

This time, V didn't look bothered. He was probably fine with questions as long as they fell in the right intervals, the ones when Nero could play the clueless Watson to his Sherlock Holmes.

“I was born in the Underworld; I am sure of it. I remember basking in demonic power, the tinge of the light, and the smell of sulfur — yet... suddenly, I felt thrown through dimensions. I landed just a few streets away from here, actually. The boys were nearby.” His face tightened, eyes lowering to his hands.

“And then?” Nero asked.

“I… succeeded in gaining their trust.”

“How?”

V glanced at him. “I had white hair. I knew their names, their mother, and their favorite games. They were still suspicious, mostly Vergil, but I proved to them that I had the power to capture them if I wished to, yet with no harmful intent. Their resistance was... partly the cause of my current state.”

“You pummeled _children_ with your familiars?”

V’s eyes closed briefly, pain flaring across his chiselled features. “My familiars are no more.”

“I’m sorry,” Nero blurted out, feeling ridiculous as soon as he uttered the sentence. He had come in determined not to believe a word of bullshit that would inevitably be fed to him, so why was he trying to comfort V ( _and why was he so awkward at it, dammit_?) Yet again, the other man’s voice — his presence — was so incomprehensibly charismatic that it was easy to let go of his rage. He found himself almost believing him.

Nero was clearly born with something wrong in the head, and he totally blamed his father for it.

“You didn’t know.” V’s eyes returned to him, his gaze perhaps a bit softer; Nero was never all that good at reading him, and was even less skilled at understanding him. “Anyway… I have new abilities now, that allowed me to keep them relatively at bay.”

“But you’re, uh…” _Do not say_ falling apart _, do not say_ falling apart _._ “Cracking again.” Okay, that sounded almost _worse_.

V’s lips curved with mirthless amusement. “Indeed. I… feel incomplete. Any energy I spend, I need to recover from external sources.”

“So does everyone, it’s called ‘eating.’ Wait, you didn’t kn —”

“I _know_ ,” V snapped as V-ly as possible. “Human food no longer sustains me. It did before, but I’m — this body is a full demon, and it is flawed. Imperfect.”

Nero was getting uncomfortably good at taking a whole lot of crazy facts and putting them away to think about later. Maybe it was because he was losing hope in his life actually having any logical meaning.

“What do you need, V?”

The demon’s eyes were the same deep green as ever, his pale hands clenched on his cane. V asked for favors the same way he would have committed to martyr himself — with grim and pained determination.

“Blood.”

Nero gaped at him, at a loss.

“I am not of the Dracula persuasion; I possess neither fangs nor supernatural charm. Obviously, feeding from the children is out of the question, and so is taking it from humans. Even if I managed to abduct someone, a mortal victim might not survive the ordeal.”

“So, you want my blood.”

“Yes.”

“And what make you think that I’m going to give it to you?”

V looked at him levelly. “You tell me.”

“What the fuck? _You_ ’re the one asking _me_!”

“I realize the gravity of my request, Nero,” V countered wryly. “I am aware that my tale is improbable at best, suspicious at worst. As I am sure you have deduced, I cannot give you any satisfying explanation as to my presence here — nor theirs. If you refuse, I will not resent you.”

Anger burns anew in Nero, bright and frustrated, a strike of heat straight from his stomach to his head. He feels like a sucker who returns each year to the same crappy carnival with the same stupid hope of catching the ball hidden under one of three moving cups.

What had Dante said about demons and blood? It had been a few months ago, a joint hunt that had ended with beers and burritos.

 _No pizza for once! You gotta live dangerously, mix up your routine_ , Nero had argued with a grin, sitting with him on a grimy pier. They had drunk from bottles chosen for their ridiculous logos — pig-faced pin-ups and roaring gorillas displayed in sharp colors on the glass. The taste was exactly what they should have expected from the packaging, and they had both grimaced after the first sip. Then, they had shared stories, Dante cheerfully pulling advice out of his ass as he regaled Nero with the misadventures of various short-witted and short-lived demon bigwigs.

 _As a rule of thumb, Nero_ , Dante had said, _whenever something asks for your blood, especially if it’s devil-related, it’s probably_ technically  _a bad_ _idea to give it to them. However, it can also get real fun! You could get a better foe, a few more demons to kill, interesting and unexpected consequences... If you believe you can get away with it - gotta live dangerously sometimes, y’know? Give blood and get burritos_.

Thinking back on it, his uncle’s advice really sucked ass, which was one more piece of evidence that Nero’s deficient brain must have come from his paternal side since he was following Dante's wisdom to a T.

“Fuck, at least try to convince me,” he mumbled as he took a step forward.

There was surprise in V’s eyes — relief, too, though he quickly hid it through the dark veil of his eyelashes. “You accept.”

“Of course I fucking do. Do I really have a choice?”

For a fleeting moment, V seemed about to say something, then he closed his lips and nodded, once.

“You are very kind, Nero.”

“Tell me about it,” the demon hunter replied bitterly.

A faint smile curved the corner of V’s mouth. He raised a white, crackled hand toward Nero. “May I?”

“You’re not biting me.”

“Your regeneration ability will make the whole thing… complicated.”

Fuck, V was right.

“Then what do you suggest, V?”

“The simplest way —” V began, before interrupting himself. “… The simplest way would be cutting a vein or an artery, and I’ll… keep it open with my teeth.”

“You know what, I’m kind of regretting that you aren’t Dracula right now. Where’s the sexy biting?” Nero quipped before he could think about what he was saying.

Fuck fuck _fuck_ what had his mouth DONE —

V looked at him curiously, then gave him the shadow of a smile. “Have you read the original book?”

“Does that mean you’re about to squash my dreams about Dracula?” Nero joked, nearly drunk with relief that the _sexy_ part of his comment had not raised an eyebrow.

“Would you like me to? Hand me the knife on the table.”

“You can talk with your mouth full?” Nero asked, instantly regretting his choice of words.

"Not intelligibly, but after… lunch.”

The knife was mostly a self-defense tool, small and sharp. V took hold of Nero’s arm with a carefulness that felt out of place, turning it over to reveal the vulnerable inside of the wrist — where the skin was thin and soft.

“Is this the part where you tell me you’ll be gentle?” Nero quipped.

V raised his eyebrows, smirking lightly. “Would that reassure you?”

“Not at all — fuck!” Nero winced when the sharp blade cut through his skin. V bit down with a harshness that Nero should have expected, blunt teeth keeping him open, and _drank_.

At first, only the human part of Nero reacted — cold, instinctive dread digging its heel inside his stomach at the sensation. He focused on breathing slowly, clenching and unclenching his fist.

Then the _demon_ intervened, and Nero barely kept himself from triggering. Rage swelled up in his guts, his throat, tearing a deep growl from his lips; the urge to transform and destroy the threat was a storm spinning under his skin. With his new devil form came great power, but also stronger instincts — all the more insidious when they felt so _natural_ , a prolongation of his temper, his anger.

One of V’s cold, crumbling hands — the one that not gripping his wrist — soothingly stroked down the length of his arm as if he were petting some wild, spooked animal. Nero would have bristled at this if it wasn’t seriously helping. He clung to the sensation, sweat beading on his nape and his temple, until the demon quieted.

Eventually, V stopped and straightened. His pale, beautiful mouth was painted with blood; he licked his lips reflexively, and something hard and needy gripped Nero’s guts.

“Thank you, Nero.” V’s cracked skin was visibly mending, his complexion going from deathly white to wan, and the tiredness that weighed on him was leaving his shoulders. Nero rubbed his nose awkwardly, trying to retain some composure. The demon in him was still growling, spikes of red hot rage in his soul, but he could deal with it; he was getting used to it.

“Yeah, yeah. So. Now. What about the kids?”

V slowly got up and stretched his long limbs, smiling with quiet contentment. Nero crossed his arms; he was not in the mood to wait for the Master of Significant Pauses to honor him with an answer. “I asked you a question, V.”

“Forgive me... It's a relief to be able to move again. As for the boys…”

V’s gaze slid to the side, green eyes and deep voice leashed with careful neutrality as he spoke. “Their presence certainly feels similar to Dante and...Vergil’s. They are eight, and their mother, Eva, was killed a few weeks ago. Dante fled and took on another name, as she had wished him to. Vergil managed to survive, thanks to Yamato and his regenerative abilities. Until they woke up one day in some nightmarish version of Red Grave — that is to say, this one — both of them were persuaded the other had died. I can attest at least that Vergil’s story is corroborated by my memories.”

“What the hell? They’re not acting like barely orphaned kids! Dante was smiling —”

“Dante is always smiling,” V interrupted. There was bitterness in his voice, ageless rancor seeping through the rich shadows of his intonation, but also something else that Nero couldn’t quite place. “An annoying habit that he learned quite young. Back then, I read or trained to calm down while he joked around, provoked me, or came up with tasteless pranks as if nothing had happened. When I found them, he was… not as skilled as disguising his distress. But my presence comforted him — and yours, too. He likes you. He was elated to have met you.”

Nero remembered the child’s grinning, berserker rage toward the demons they'd found. Okay, so maybe he sucked at reading through jovial pretenses. Who said that monster hunting wasn’t an amazing career to learn more about yourself?

“I see. And the brothers were so happy to find out that their twin was alive that they decided to skewer each other?“

V’s gaze was firmly riveted to the side. “They are demon children. Emotional maturity is not their forte.”

“Just spill it, V.”

The other man’s mouth tightened with irritation, then remorse chased anger in his eyes and he bit his lips. “How would you feel if something... precious was stolen from you and you got it back by chance?”

“Overjoyed?”

“Why? If something was taken from you and you couldn’t be sure you could prevent this from happening ever again, would you really want it back? It would only hurt you later, when you’d inevitably lose it once more. To earn the right to have anything, you must be strong enough to keep it.”

“That’s a load of bullshit. Everything can be lost, sure, but if you push it away because you’re afraid of future pain - then you were the one that took it from yourself.”

V’s eyes narrowed just a little, just enough that Nero noticed, and he seemed about to say something - but he only lowered his head, closed his eyes, and finally sighed. “...That is, anyway, what Vergil is thinking right now. He lost his mother and his brother. He only just got Dante back, but he’s too weak to keep him; therefore, he thinks that he should... refuse this poisonous present. I only retained him by promising him more knowledge and training, but he avoids Dante as much as he can... when the latter doesn’t succeed in riling him up.”

“Hence the stabbing?”

“Dante destroyed one of the books Vergil managed to get from the ruins. I believe part of him understands that if he wants Vergil to pay attention to him, he must provoke him.”

Nero thought of the burning grief in a child’s voice, of _I hate him_ shouted fervently, like a declaration of war. “Well, if you have a poetic quote about dysfunctional families, V, now’s the right time to get it out.”

V gave him a wry smirk. “Not at the moment, I'm afraid, but I will look into it.”

“Perfect. Now, since you’re the Vergil-whisperer, how do I convince him to join us? Because I’m taking all of you with me.”

“You can discuss it with him. I feel his presence nearby… He must have come to check on Dante. Since his brother likes you, he will be interested in speaking with you.”

“That a euphemism for ‘attacking you?’”

V’s asymmetrical smile could almost be a grin. “Only one way to find out.”

“Don’t leave while I’m talking to Vergil, or I’m tracking your ass down and taking back every single drop of blood I gave you.”

“An interesting endeavor, but I’ll pass. I will stay here and read. Good luck to you, Nero.”

Nero was closing the door behind him when he realized that V could just have accompanied him to talk to his younger self. Why was he doing all the work alone?

Oh yeah, because he was “very kind.” Right.

He was such a sucker.

***

Dante was sleeping next door, curled onto a pile of cushions, curtains, and various pieces of fabric that apparently served as bedding. Marks of violence were all over the place: holes in the walls, lacerated covers, destroyed furniture. Even now, small fingers nervously clutched a handful of rough cotton, pulling and tearing through it in the throes of what seemed like a bad nightmare. The boy’s lips were forming inarticulate words, torment clenching his pale face.

Sleep made Dante honest, apparently.

Standing awkwardly near the door, a hand on the hilt of his machete, Vergil turned sharply to glare at Nero. The boy didn’t flee, though, which was a start.

“Hello,” Nero whispered.

“If you want to talk, we’re doing it outside,” Vergil snapped haughtily. “You’re just going to wake Dante.”

No shaking the kids, Nero reminded himself. Even if they deserved it. Kyrie would be upset. Once they closed the door behind them, Nero stared at the boy, letting him feel their height difference — which was supremely petty, but first of all, the bastard was taller than him as an adult and secondly, he pissed Nero off.

“What do you want?” Vergil asked coldly.

“To take you, Dante, and V to my house. There’s nothing but demons in these ruins.”

Vergil’s hand tightened on his machete, his face a mask of careful indifference. He was still too young to hide his tension and the anger that simmered in those cold blue eyes. “It suits me just fine.”

Nero crossed his arms, looking for arguments that would penetrate through his father's thick skull. “Listen, you won’t get any stronger fighting small fries. Want more power? Then come with me. I got pretty strong by watching and fighting amazing warriors and I gotta say, I ain’t too bad myself. In Red Grave, you’ll only find pests and random looters.”

“I don’t want to go with Dante.”

“Why?”

Vergil hesitated; he obviously hadn’t expected the question. “I hate him.”

Of, for fuck's sake. “He loves you.”

The boy turned away as if slapped. His hands clenched, then his jaw; when he talked, his voice was tighter and angrier. “I don’t care. He’d better not get caught up with those stupid human emotions. That’ll teach him.”

Nero refrained from shaking him and thought quickly. If decency and family didn’t work —

Oh yeah.

The fucking Sparda way.

“Then he’ll get stronger than you. There’s nobody here who’s as strong as me, a descendant of” — _you, you de-aged amnesiac fucker —_ “Sparda.”

Everything in Vergil’s posture and expression tensed up; a young beast provoked. “Do not think you’re the only master I can find.”

“I don’t _think,_ kid, I _know_. And even if you could meet some half-baked bigwig a few cities away, which — don’t count on it, because all the portals are closed — I’d still be the best one. Wanna prove me wrong? Then let’s deal with this the Sparda way. Fight me, and whoever loses will have to obey the winner.”

“You’re an adult,” the boy pointed out with surprising self-awareness. “That won’t be fair.”

“So give me a handicap. You can use all the weapons you want and I’ll be unarmed. Or, I won’t attack, but you’ll have to try to land a hit three times in uh — ten minutes.”

Vergil pursed his lips, thinking about it, before deciding. “ _Both_. There are a few clocks in the offices downstairs. And if I win... You stay here and teach me alone.”

Will you look at that! His father had half a brain, even when his ego was stung. Of course, the encounter was unfairly balanced, whatever the handicaps, but Vergil was too prideful to entirely back out of a challenge. Nero couldn't entirely blame him: he would have done the same in his stead.

“Fine by me. We going outside? Don’t want to wake Dante up, after all.”

Vergil nodded and they got down through the wrecked stairs, the boy far more careful than his brother in negotiating the ruins. The street below the hotel was wide, relatively free from debris; Nero made a show of setting up the alarm clock they’d found and of putting his weapons down in a pile at Vergil’s feet, smiling with cocky ease. Okay, so maybe it was mean to taunt a kid, but Kyrie wasn’t here, so he’d allow himself to be just a bit childish.

“Ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

“Let’s go!”

Nero had expected Vergil to seize him up before attacking, but the kid rushed him with surprising ardor. He had the speed and strength of a full grown man, maybe more, but Nero had exceeded the limitations of mortal abilities for quite some time: he avoided his attack easily, anticipating and escaping easily the feint that followed. Vergil growled his frustration and pushed further, obviously - and thankfully for Nero's pride - to no avail.

Not utterly humiliating the child while showing off his own skill was much more of a difficult challenge than merely winning. It was easier said than done when it was so tempting to push himself further, to flow into the moment, but _no;_ Vergil managed to land a hit, just one, before the alarm rang.

Then, only then, did Nero allow himself to trigger into his devil form, staring down at Vergil. Cold fury burned in the boy’s pale eyes, his face a tense caricature of control.

“You’re mocking me.”

“I’m teaching you a lesson. Someone did the same to me, once.”

“You’re–” Vergil abruptly cut himself off, offended by the heat in his own voice, and glared at him. “You’ve _won_. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Tonight, we’re sleeping in. Tomorrow morning, we leave. Is that alright with you?”

“No,” the boy says bluntly. “But you have my word. I’ll follow. Just don’t expect me to play _nice_.”

 _Why_? How did his father manage to be the least sympathetic orphan in the world? Nero found so much of himself in Vergil, it wasn’t even funny. Eva’s son, though, had closed himself far tighter than Nero ever was; had he met Kyrie, he probably would have pulled on her hair and called her a fool.

 _Yeah, you can’t lose anything if you cut it away from you first_. _Great idea, pops. No wonder you thought it was fine to destroy every part of yourself, except for your demon_.

When they returned, Nero left Vergil to his watching-Dante-in-his-sleep thing and went straight to V. Sitting on the windowsill, reading under the moonlight, the demon turned to look at him. “So?”

“I convinced Vergil.”

“Congratulations. Through blunt force?”

Oh, yeah. He’d probably seen them through the window. Nero shrugged. “I used the Sparda way. We bet it on a duel; I won.”

“Astute.”

“I’m getting better at understanding how these two assholes work and that worries me.”

V gave him one of his pained half-grins, as if amusement was torn out from something raw in him. “A most commendable mindset. Would you like to rest? I’ve had sustenance, so I’m fine, but I am aware that Dante woke you in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, okay. Can I crash here?”

“Please help yourself. Do use my couch. I believe you’ve more than earned it.”

“Don’t you worry, the floor will suit me just fine.”

V raised an elegant eyebrow but didn’t insist. “Good night, Nero.”

Of course, he didn’t sleep; he faked it until morning, braced for an attack that didn’t come. Maybe the demons were waiting for him to bring them to Nico, or maybe they wanted to play a bit longer.

Or maybe the whole mess was real. V had truly been recreated, and the same went for the twins, unless…

Unless something had happened to the real Dante and Vergil, like… maybe they really _were_ deaged, and those kids in the next room actually _were_ his uncle and father, or… hell if Nero knew.

What if a demon had vanquished them?

Nah, that had to be impossible. Dante ate devil lords for breakfast, and Vergil had devoured the grossest fruit in the universe for ultimate power; together, they would have the force of an apocalypse.

But...

Fuck.

Nero needed to find a way to contact the real Dante and Vergil as soon as he'd get this mess under control.


	4. I sought to serve my brother...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing by the lovely [Subtextual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/). If you love lyrical, very emotional, very well-written D/V pieces, check her out <3 !

They left the morning after, a merry band of unsmiling demons. Now that he had been fed, V walked with an ease that Nero didn’t remember – smooth, elegant steps that made no noise on the ruined ground. Vergil and Dante were trailing behind, the former attempting to ignore the latter as Dante tirelessly attempted to strike a conversation.

“So, Vergil, you’re coming with us, huh? What changed your mind? Hey, you’re ignoring me? Vergil! Earth to Vergil, you hear me? Books _suck!_ Books are for _losers._ Books are only cool for testing out a new sword. Or burning. Or— or folding paper planes!”

Nero glanced at Vergil. The boy was good at containing his emotions for a child this young, but Nero could almost physically feel the irritation building up in those slim shoulders.

“ _Veeeeergiiiiil!_ ” Dante persisted. V sighed quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose. Maybe he felt the ghost of years spent enduring Dante’s relentless onslaught in the face of his brother’s indifference.

“Ignoring him never struck me at something that could work,” Nero whispered to him.

“He will tire of it, in time. In the past, he stormed off... or attacked.”

“Yeah, let’s avoid both,” Nero said at the same time Dante finally snapped.

“You suck _so fucking_ much, Vergil!”

“Mom would be sad to hear you swear,” the older twin retorted with cold, deliberate cruelty.

Nero knew that tone, that detached voice: twisting the knife in your heart deep enough to stab your enemy too, jabbing at it to prove you didn’t hurt; taking pain and making it your weapon. _Yeah, my mom was a whore but your mom’s so ugly, your dad was probably a regular customer_. _Don’t ya think I look like you?_

In that moment, Nero understood how deeply Vergil grieved his mother – the desperate, gaping intensity of pain so violent it could only be wielded as a weapon.

Not that he had the time to mull over this discovery, because Dante was jumping Vergil with a roar that didn’t sound quite human. Nero crossed his arms and stepped back, letting the kids brawl – violent, snarling blows, rolling on the ground with animalistic anger.

V glanced at him. “I thought you would try to stop them.”

“You’re not doing anything either.” It was actually hard to resist the temptation to intervene, but hell if he was going to prevent Dante from landing a punch on Vergil after that line. Sometimes, anger couldn’t be contained without brewing hatred.

At least, this time, they weren’t using deadly weapons.

V shrugged. “It is… healthier that they… just get it out of their system.”

“Was thinking the same.”

Nero could almost feel—No, he really _did_ feel a growing demonic energy radiating from the two gremlins as they grew wilder in their struggle. “So… How violent did you get when you fought as a kid?”

“Very.”

“We talking ‘a very strong punch’ violent or ‘a good knifing solve everything’ violent?”

Whatever V was going to answer, it got lost in the fact that Dante had just bitten off part of his brother’s ear.

Nero reacted from pure instinct: one moment, he was frozen in place and the next, he had one twin in each hand. “What the _fuck!_ Are you! _Doing!_ ”

Neither of the kids answered. Dante looked ill, his childish features ravaged by ageless guilt; Vergil was in shock and… fuck, there was wetness in his eyes, a familiar trembling in his frame. Without thinking, Nero deployed his wings to bring them up for a four-armed hug. Dante instantly grabbed at him, curling against him, and soon buried choking sobs against his shoulder. Vergil struggled, let out the garbled beginning of a cold rebuttal, and then just gripped at his own arms as he whined low in the curve of Nero’s neck. He startled when the demon hunter rubbed his back, tense and trembling with unshed tears. It was not only the bite, Nero knew. It was how it had been given, and the rawness of wounds prodded deeper still.

Nero wanted to find the words to fix it all.

He knew there were none.

So he just kept the kids locked in his arms, rubbing their backs and cursing his powerlessness.

After a while, Vergil fell silent and his shudders stilled, his self-control clamping back into place. “Let me down,” he whispered with all the authority he could muster as an eight year old with a grief-torn voice.

Nero obeyed. “Show me your ear,” he asked, softly. The child turned his head. The bite was closing, ugly still – regeneration slower than in adulthood. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Vergil said with a liar’s assertiveness.

“Right. Okay, you follow along with V.”

Vergil’s gaze jumped to Dante, who was still clutching Nero. Dante had contorted to see his brother's wound, but he instantly buried his face back against Nero's torso to avoid Vergil's eyes.

Well, _that_ was going to be fun. “Just to be clear, next time I see a fight this violent, I’m grounding both your asses,” Nero declared. Not that it had any meaning in the current circumstance, and Vergil snorted scornfully, so Nero corrected himself. “That means no training for two days!”

He could feel the boy’s indignant glare boring at his back as he turned and gestured at V to start walking. Dante wiped at the last of his tears, silent and limp in Nero’s arms.

“Lemme go.” His voice was low, rough from crying. Nero only used his two freed arms to embrace him tighter, petting his dirty white hair, and he felt the child tremble at this gesture of affection – a touch-starved animal.

“You wanna talk about this?” Nero asked gently.

“Mom made me apologize to Vergil when I… When I broke his things or did something bad to him.”

“Sounds like one of those times.”

“I never hurt him like that before, I swear! Never tore something off, I only ever stabbed him, I didn’t want to… I...” The kid doubled over and bit at Nero’s vest to stifle a sob. The young hunter patted him and caressed his back, trying to not trip himself as his body struggled to adjust to six limbs moving at the same time.

“People can become nasty when they hurt. You did a pretty bad thing, but now, you can draw from that experience to never do it again.” Wisdom was so easy to impart, much harder to practice, but, well. _Do as I say, not as I do_ was pretty much the epitome of child education.

“I dunno if I should apologize when he hates me so much,” Dante whispered brokenly. “He’ll just be angry if I talk to him. You only want excuses from the people you care about.”

“I’m sure...” Nero stopped, honesty catching up to his good intentions. “He may not show it, but he cares.”

Dante snorted, a touch of youthful cynicism creeping back in his voice. “Yeah, right.”

“He just sucks at showing love.”

“Nero, I _know_ him. I’m his brother.” There was a quiet finality in Dante’s words and Nero wasn’t sure how to answer it, so he just patted the boy’s hair, letting silence take over.

“You know what I’m going to order when we’ll get back to a normal town?” he said after a while..

“What?”

“A whole bunch of pizzas and a mountain of sundaes. The only limit is your stomach.”

“ _Whaaat!_ You’re serious?”

“I am.”

“ _Swear it_.”

“I swear.”

“Fuck!” Dante so obviously delighted in cursing that Nero almost found it cute. The boy squirmed to get down and he obliged, relishing the thought of folding back his wings. It was a relief to stop tripping over his own feet.

Dante fell back in step at his side. V and Vergil walked on ahead; Vergil's neck and shirt were bloody messes. Dante's eyes settled on his brother, pain and guilt carving their way back into the kid’s eyes. There was nothing more that Nero could say to comfort him, though, so he settled for small comments about their surroundings, about Nico, about food and the van and Kyrie. Dante latched onto the distraction like a drowned man to a plank, chatting with an enthusiasm that trembled at the edges.

It looked like the demon part of the equation wasn’t going to be the most difficult thing to deal with.

Turned out, the human side was far more complex.

***

“So _these_ are the gremlins,” Nico said, pausing to take a drag of her cigarette. Of course she could afford to look cool; she had had time to prepare herself for the idea of two small doppelgangers and a revenant. “And _this_ is our resident zombie. Hey, V! Been a while.”

V gave her a faint, sardonic smile. “‘Vampire' might be more accurate.”

“Ya always been such a goth. Gotta warn ya, tho, if I see you leaning over me while I’m sleepin’ in my Victorian negligee, I’m shootin’.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Great – hey, brats! Nobody enters the van without my permission!”

The boys stopped and turned toward her. Dante, hands raised from the front door’s handle, was picture-perfect innocence while Vergil, still fiddling with the back door, scowled. Nico glared at them, fists on her hips, until they reluctantly left the van alone.

“Nero! They’re _yer_ kids, you watch ’em!”

“Never made ’em! They’re V’s.”

Nico’s cigarette fell from dumb fingers. Nero had never seen her so shocked since, well... a few days ago, when she had thought the children were his.

Okay, so there _were_ some fun perks to the situation.

“V! You had _sex!”_ Nico’s voice was vibrating with a mix of incredulity, shock and awe. V scowled, rolling his eyes.

“Nero is misrepresenting the truth. I found them.”

Nico raised her arms in exasperation. “Okay, so _who_ made these damn kids?”

“The great knight Sparda,” Vergil retorted with cold anger. “Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s rude to talk in front of people as if they were not here?” His hand was on his machete’s hilt, obviously preparing to attack.

Dante looked at him with consternation, visibly not as gun-ho as his brother, but snapped to a defensive pose all the same, stepping closer to Vergil. “Yeah, and our mom Eva, too!”

Okay, if this version of his father was as discreet as the original, Nero couldn’t even imagine how Vergil had survived to adulthood – though right now, the boy had only been an orphan for a few weeks; hopefully, he’d learned the virtue of lying later.

“And who are _you_?” Vergil demanded.

Nico proudly raised her chin. “I’m Nicoletta Goldstein, granddaughter of Nell Goldstein, the legendary gunsmith, and a goddamn great artisan myself!” Vergil’s resolutely unimpressed expression earned him a scowl. “And I’ll have ya know that Nero here wouldn’t be _half_ as powerful without my handiwork.”

“ _Half as powerful_? Yeah, humility always was your strong point.”

“I’m a realist,” Nico retorted with the smuggest, happiest smile. “Anyway, what’s the plan?”

Nero glanced at the kids. Vergil narrowed his eyes, apparently sharp enough to catch on to his hesitation. Obviously, there would be no talking without the boys – at least not without them trying to eavesdrop. Might as well save himself the trouble and the suspicion.

“I wanna find a way to contact demons – more specifically, half-demons. I was thinking that Trish could look through Dan— through his office for us – he’s got a ton of old books, must be some about demonology. And the Order’s archives might contain something useful, too.”

“Who’s Dan?” Dante asked curiously.

“My uncle.”

“Dan’s not his whole name. You stopped midway.”

Well, this was going to come out sooner or later; might as well rip the Band-Aid now. “Yeah. It’s Dante.”

“Like _me_?”

So much for Dante's pretense that he was called “Tony” – but since Vergil hid neither his name nor his origins, he'd probably given up on the lie. “Wait, but your dad’s called Vergil, and your uncle’s called Dante–”

This was going to be such a pain to explain.

***

The explanations were long, bitter, and interspersed by the twins’ questions. V had been a precious ally since the kids trusted him more, especially Vergil. As far as the boys knew, now, they had been transported in time and V was someone very close to their adult selves. It was the only explanation Nero could think off that didn’t involve them being demonic simulacra, and he was not about to open that can of worms for now.

They took it relatively well, or as well as could be expected. Vergil brooded on it while Dante apparently shrugged it off and kept living his life. His half-demonic child life. They had asked about their future selves, of course, but Nero had kept it to “you became amazing warriors” and Nico and V had followed suit. There was no need to hit children — let alone potentially fake doppelgangers — with decades of hate, enmity and, from what Trish had told him when he had asked her about his father, slavery, among other cheerful topics.

Nevermind the fact that Nero was a little worried that they were _really_ here from the past, and that his existence might have already been doomed by some kind of looming time paradox thing.

All questions aside, though, the kids were a _pain_. After the bite, Dante had seemed determined to keep away from his twin, which was a great idea in principle. The boy, however, needed his brother’s attention like he needed to breathe; his resolve only needed a full night’s sleep to crumble. And Vergil’s self-imposed isolation — all aggressive indifference and cold repartee — was driving Dante up the wall. As well as Nero. And Nico. And V.

Being in the same van as two out-of-control traumatized demon kids and not shouting at either of them definitely had to be some proof of virtue.

“Can’t you convince Vergil to stop being an asshole, V?” Nero asked three days after they departed Red Grave.

They had stopped on the side of a rural road, smack in the middle of a sad-looking field. The sky was getting evening-dull, yet remained strangely light. Dante was sulking on top of the van, idly gesturing with the combat knife he’d brought before leaving Red Grave; Vergil was ostensibly training with his machete, eyes bored into an invisible enemy.

“He is not ‘being an asshole,’” V corrected somewhat rigidly. He had fled the sun and was leaning against a tree, under the shadow of its foliage; catching a tan would probably ruin his image or something. “You must acknowledge that Dante’s obstinacy is… tiring.”

Sitting nearby, crouched amongst the uncut wild weeds that bordered the fields, Nero craned his neck to look at him.

“Yeah, but lil’ Vergil is acting like a goddamn sociopath with the way he either ignores him or insults him.”

“He is acting poorly, I’ll give you that. But I’d argue that it’s more an excess of sensibility than the opposite.” V’s voice was low and slow, looking at Vergil like it was not really the boy he was seeing.

“Yeah, well, it’s stupid. He’s going to lose his brother, at this rate! His only remaining family!”

He wasn’t used to seeing vexation on V’s face. Oh, right – V was kinda Vergil too, after all.

Was kinda his _father_.

Fuck.

“He’s not losing him. He’s forging his resolve, his strength. He’s...” Suddenly there was a silence and then V chuckled bitterly, a dark, self-mocking sound. “… You’re right. He is beginning to get obsessed with _power_. And he’s going to cut everything away to get it, Dante first of all.”

Nero looked at him, surprised by the sudden change of heart. It certainly wasn’t his eloquence that had swayed V, so why had the demon changed his tune? He suspected that he wasn’t going to get any answer if he asked, though, and it’d only piss him off. Or maybe V would answer, and that would actually make it worse – hurt or lead him down a road of false hope, destination: Disappointment City. If one thing was clear in this weird situation, it was that this V was fake and that interacting with him was stupid at best, dangerous at worst.

Yet, Nero was going to encourage him to do the right thing all the same, because if he went along with the charade, he was going to do it _well_. “So, you gotta convince Vergil that he’s wrong. He hates me, but he trusts you.”

“He doesn’t hate you.”

“Yeah, right. He’s always glaring at me.”

“Dante... is always clinging to you,” V replied, glancing at the pouting kid that was currently performing sword stunts on top of the van. He spoke as if it explained everything, a calm finality in his voice.

“So?”

V looked at him for a long moment, but said nothing. His eyes seemed very green under the evening sun’s glare, duller than Vergil’s in color, yet sharp as a knife under the softness of his long lashes. “I will talk to him.”

“That’s not an answer.”

An asymmetrical smile curved V’s full lips. “I can’t explain everything to you, can I?”

Nero crossed his arms, setting his jaw. “You actually _can_.”

“Nero… I was wondering if I might feed from you again.”

Nero’s heart stuttered, briefly. Ghost pain and demon outrage flooded him, sensation and memory still seared in his mind – in his flesh. “I— Uh – already?”

“Yes,” V said simply.

He looked… neutral. Uninterested. Like he was asking for something mundane, a bit of a chore – _help me fix my sink_ , or _I need a hand to pile up wood for the winter_.

“You’ve got a hell of a way to ask for favors, V.”

The other man tensed – something dark brewing in his eyes, rigid tension in the set of his jaw. “I have no choice. Do you accept or not?”

“And I don’t have a choice either,” Nero retorted, pissed off at the demon’s utter lack of gratitude. “Come on, let’s go into the van.”

“We should stay here. Nico will complain if we let blood drip on the floor.”

“I’m not letting you suck my blood in front of the children.”

V cracked a smile and, to his utter dismay, Nero felt himself _blush_. “Don’t – don’t make it weird! It’s just, it’s gory and they’re too young to see this. We’ll just go into the bathroom, okay? You can’t tell me it’ll be hard to clean up a tiled floor!”

V glanced at the van, opened his mouth and closed it, as if he wanted to let sentences form a bit clearer in his head before he spoke. “I can’t say I know Nico better than you, yet... Do you really believe it is best for both of us to shut ourselves in a small bathroom while she’s here? You realize you moaned, last time.”

Oh _hell_ no. The mere idea of the consequences was enough to make a shiver run down Nero’s spine.

“Why do you gotta make it sound so _weird_?”

“You’re the one that doesn’t want to be bitten in front of children.”

“Fuck it,” Nero muttered, feeling defeated. “Do whatever you want.”

The way V smiled made Nero’s heart skip another beat. “Take off your coat, Nero… Please.”

And Nero had _just_ told him not to make it weird but it was only logical, wasn’t it, that Nero should take off his coat to allow V access to his arm? And yet there was something in the way the demon spoke – teasing, assured, knowledgeable of something that the hunter felt like he was missing. V never used _please_ like most people did – he gave it a new meaning that Nero hadn’t yet grasped.

At the moment, it made the moment far too… whatever it _wasn’t_. Nero took off his jacket with fumbling hands, face hot and skin too tight. He searched for a witty reply, but his tongue was tied. He checked that the kids were still busy, instantly felt guilty about it and extended his arm to V. “You’re still not biting me with those blunt teeth.”

“It’s not nice,” V drawled, “to criticize someone’s physical features in front of them.”

“I’m _not_ criticizin’ anything, you’re perfectly fine and – and all, but anyway, that’s not the point! I’m just not letting you mangle me. Don’t you have a knife?”

“Mm.” V took his wrist delicately, as if Nero was a goddamn princess, and turned it to expose the inside. His thumb pressed down gently where veins were most prominent, and it felt almost like a caress – but then his blade cut down with every once of violence he hadn’t shown before. Nero tried to keep his voice down while V’s fingers gripped his wrist hard enough that they pulled on each side of the wound, preventing it from closing. The demon leaned down and tongued at raw flesh – long, careful swipes, gathering every last drop of blood, searing through him like wildfire.

Nero panted, nerves alight with pain and something dark and nameless which he didn’t understand. His instincts were screaming at him for what he was allowing to happen to him — to be hurt, to be _fed from_ — mindless rage rushing through his veins, and he hit his thigh with his free hand to keep from punching V. His legs were beginning to give; the demon’s hand pressed slightly on the small of his back, guiding him a few step back, leading him down to a sitting position with his shoulders pressed against the bark of a tree.

Even as a normal human, he wouldn’t have liked the sensation, but as a part-demon hybrid? He _physically_ felt the power he was transferring to V. He hadn’t even asked for a price. He hadn’t even immobilized the other, ensured that his weakness couldn’t be taken advantage of. The false demureness of V’s green eyes, the deceitful silence of his lips...

A tongue deep in Nero’s flesh, dragging fire along it. Pain, so vivid and frustrating it almost felt like desire, and the gut-wrenching feeling of being fed upon.

Nero closed his eyes tighter, each breath short and hissing in his throat. Sweat was starting to soak through his clothes; he was an inch away from to triggering, the devil vibrating just under the surface, skin tight and itching.

V’s free hand stroked his shoulder, his arm. _Good dog. Calm down_. Wasn’t he a good pet? Wasn’t he doing a good job? Feeding V with the same docility with which he had brought V to Urizen. Nero threw his head back until it hit the tree trunk, twice, hard enough to hurt, and growled, inhuman harmonics sliding into the sound.

V stopped, letting his wound knit back together. His mouth was a mess of blood and, _fuck_ , maybe a bit of saliva; he wiped at it with the back of his hand and lapped up the result. Nero felt like a car wreck, anger and fucking – and fucking _arousal_ roaming through his mind, wild and animalistic. This blood-drinking thing was going to drive him mad. He needed to call Kyrie.

“Is this better than biting?” V asked, voice low, so calm that Nero’s fists clenched with the need to grab him – to shake him – to see him unsettled for _once_.

“When you asked me to bring you to Urizen, what were you thinking?”

The demon blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard what I said! You – you’ve only ever fucking _used_ me in this whole thing. Back then, and now!”

V briefly glanced aside, toward the van. Oh, so _now_ , he was worried about the kids? Sure was convenient, uh?

“Nero...”

“Don’t you dare fucking bother with anything but the truth, _Vergil_.”

Something flashed in V’s eyes. “I’m not Vergil.”

Nero wanted to grab and shake him, clench his fingers into his shoulders until it hurt. “Yeah, _right_. That’s why you lied to Dante and me, you’re _technically_ not Vergil, just half of him.”

“ _A truth that’s told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent_ ,” V whispered as if to himself.

“Fuck your poetry!”

The demon flinched at that, reflexively grabbing for his cane. Nero’s heart quickened, adrenaline rushing amongst the chemical mix currently racing in his veins. Yeah, he wanted a fight, to finally punch out the frustration and the feeling of betrayal that had been simmering ever since V’s disappearance.

V looked at him, careful, unmoving. Just his hand on his cane, his eyes on Nero’s face.

“I wanted to live,” V said finally.

Nero couldn’t read his expression, nor the intent gaze leveled on him. “What?”

“I wanted to live. Whatever the price. I wanted to… fix what I, what... he had done, becoming Urizen, but I also wanted to continue to exist. To return to him, whatever the price.”

There was pain in V’s voice and it cut through Nero’s anger like a knife, hurting just as much, because it was far easier to be furious than – everything the hot rush of blood in his veins helped him forget.

“So you’re saying that you’re going to use me.”

For a second, V looked like he was about to say Nero's name, but then he just replied with cruel softness. “I want to live.”

Nero felt sick. Probably the blood loss.

“Yeah. Well, don’t worry, you’ve got your blood bag right here.”

He rose to his feet and V followed him, so much quicker now that he wasn’t weighted down by a crumbling body. The demon lightly touched his arm, unresisting when Nero slapped his hand away.

“It doesn’t mean that I’m not enjoying your company, Nero. Nor that I don’t feel gratitude for your help.”

“I’ll be sure to put ‘likable tool’ on my resume,” Nero drawled with more dark humor than he really felt.

V’s face hardened, but he suddenly turned his attention away – to the rustle of Vergil’s approach in the tall weeds of the roadside. The child’s hand rested on his weapon’s hilt, as always; he said nothing until he was at V’s side, careful eyes fixated on Nero.

“Are you fighting?”

The message was clear: if they were, Vergil had chosen V's side. Great fatherly instincts from the eight year old here.

Nero bit back a nasty answer and shook his head. “Too late, we’ve just finished. Want me to kick your ass for training? I’m taking you and Dante on.”

“I don’t want to fight alongside Dante,” the kid retorted.

“Your loss.”

“You should join them, Vergil” V said softly.

Nero and Vergil both looked at him in surprise. V smiled at the boy with something like bitterness. “If you learn to fight with Dante… You’ll be unstoppable.”

“But we can be separated,” Vergil objected harshly. “We’ve been before, and now we’ve even been transported through time. It’s better that I know how to fight alone. It’s better that _he_ knows how to fight alone, too.”

V looked at him and then knelt, touching the hand that his past self kept on his weapon. “If you learn to fight alone now, you’ll be doing so for the rest of your life. If you cut him away now… You can learn to survive on your own anytime, but what you two are together can be broken only once. One time. And then it’ll never be fixed.”

Vergil’s entire being tensed, jaw clenching, hand gripping the hilt of his machete like a lifeline. “I’m not strong enough yet.” His voice was tight, carefully controlled. “It’s useless if we don’t have the power. If we’re weak and half-human.”

V bit his lips, his gaze lowering.

“I’m here,” Nero interrupted. “And I’m strong enough to protect you.”

Vergil looked at him with imperial disdain and spoke plainly, as if his argument was strong enough that he didn’t need any inflection to bring his point home. “Our mother was there, too, but she could not protect us.”

That was it, and Nero could not answer. _Our mother_. A mortal woman, devoid of any power, of any fancy arsenal.

 _Our mother_. Tall and proud, strong eyes and a warm smile in the portrait that the real Dante kept on his desk.

 _Our_ mother. The strongest person in the universe to an eight year old. It was so self-evident in the kid’s voice that, to him, she was as powerful a protector – maybe more – than Nero, or V, or anyone else.

And she had fallen.

There wasn’t really any counter-argument to that.

“Our father could have protected us,” Vergil added. “But he wasn’t there. Humans can’t do anything against demons.” He tried so hard to sound casual.

V’s hand touched Vergil’s white hair, softly. “I know, and I understand what you are thinking. I would have done the same in your place. But Dante… Without you, he will get lost. And if you push him away hard enough, as you are doing now... you know him. You know how obstinate he can be… and you know when he gives up. When he won’t come back when you call him.”

Vergil’s eyes flashed with quiet horror then. “He’ll always come.” He said the words with a quiet willpower, as if he believed he could shape reality with enough conviction. V’s eyes darkened with something distant that was not anger, not quite; he opened his mouth, then closed it as if he was afraid of what he could say.

Well, this looked like a job for the heinous Nero.

“Y’know, when Dante tore off your ear, he told me it wasn’t worth it to say sorry because you hated him so much. That it was better if he stayed away. So, if you keep at it long enough, you’ll teach him that being with you is painful and lonely and then he’s gonna learn to live without you, forever, and he’ll probably hate you.”

Nero never thought of himself as a good speaker; his version of “eloquence” relied more on hitting people with the blunt truth until it worked than on real charisma.

Still, he probably struck a nerve, because Vergil threw himself at him with a childish roar while V stared at him with quiet horror, looking so taken aback that it was simply _hilarious_.

Totally worth a machete through the guts.

“Kick his ass, Nero!” Dante shouted from the top of the van.

Vergil’s eyes darkened with pure, inhuman fury.

Okay, so life was still fun, sometimes.


	5. Shards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, this chapter and I owe everything to the amazing editing work of [Subtextual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual)!

“So,” Nico drawled when they got back to the van, “had fun pummeling the children?”

“It was training.” Nero was only half-lying. After all, it _had_ (partly) been training. Well, at least, it had been a good teaching opportunity. Vergil probably needed it; he had thrown everything at Nero, possessed by white-knuckled fury, teeth grinding down angry cries that he had been too proud to let out.

Dante had joined the fight midway, switching teams without rhyme nor reason. He beamed at Nico. He was sweating, glowing, happy.

“Man, that was so fun! Next time, I’m definitely putting a dent in Nero!”

Nico threw him a skeptical look. “Just so ya know, lil’ demon, don’t let Nero here teach you any bad habits. If you stab normal humans, they die, m’kay?”

Vergil made a small noise of satisfaction.

“Don’t sound so pleased, you!” Nico barked, staring hard at the boy.

Vergil shrugged, predictably indifferent. Nero snickered.

“Wouldn’t have pegged you as the motherly type, Nico.”

“What do y’know, ya develop a habit for it when you’re constantly keeping _someone_ ’s dumb ass outta trouble.”

“What? That’s a goddamn lie!”

“Oh yeah? Who’s breaking her ass trying to design the best devil breakers for you? Who’s drivin’ through the worst roads, _and_ the worst _non-roads_ , for that matter —”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a damn saint. Let’s just eat and sleep, okay? I’m exhausted.”

It had been tiring, fighting the kids. Nero had mostly defended himself, parrying and blocking, careful to draw their attention as to avoid a repeat of the ear-tearing incident. Controlling the rhythm and flow of the battle while trying to keep everyone safe had been a damn pain. His innate style focused on speed and brute force, not careful thought.

There also was the matter of his demonic instincts. They’d been a pain since he’d triggered for the first time: new awareness and urges brewed in the back of his mind, heightening his senses, sharpening his skills... and lusting for blood, domination and destruction. They did get worse during and after triggering but, truth to be told, they never really shut up. And with the devil so close to the surface now, enraged by the power he'd offered to V— yeah, Nero'd had to be extra careful with the kids.

But Nero was _fine_. He was _in control_. Even when he found himself with Dante’s sword in his stomach after the kids had managed to interfere with each other's attack confusingly enough to land a hit, Nero hadn’t slipped up. He could feel destructive fury boiling in his blood, but he managed to contain himself. He was more human than demon, after all. Neither of the kids had even seen that anything was wrong, he repeated to himself. He was _okay._ He controlled the beast.

(And he could almost believe it as long as he didn’t remember V drinking his blood — every fiber of his being screaming for V's pain, trembling with the desire to break him.)

“What’s for dinner?” Dante asked, pulling on Nero’s arm.

The boy was more clingy now that he trusted the young hunter — touch-starved, probably; needy and demanding in the way he constantly sought out attention. Nero smiled at him, brought back to reality.

“You like curry?”

“I dunno. Is it good or does it have vegetables?”

“Taste it and you’ll see.”

Dante made a face. “That means it _has_ vegetables.”

“Smart kid. Think of it as preparing your stomach for all those pizzas I promised you.”

The boy groaned spectacularly. Vergil scoffed with ostensible indifference behind him, and joined V on the couch to read. Rolling his eyes, Nero went on to cook while Dante pestered Nico — not that she really seemed to mind. Dante had won her over with a deluge of questions and easy compliments about her work; a promise to commission a gun from her when he grew up had sealed the deal. Dante was apparently much better with women as a kid than he was as an adult, but Nero’s only two crushes had turned out to be Kyrie, whom he loved as a sister more than a lover, and V, who was technically part of his father. He didn't feel like he was in the best position to criticize Dante.

Maybe being a hot mess was genetic, as well.

***

With three adults and two children, the van was far too cramped for the night. Nico slept inside, on the ratty couch, and the “rabble” (as Nico liked to call anyone but herself, the queen of the DMC mobile unit) had to make do with tents and sleeping bags. The extra space was a blessing, though, because the boys were almost more dangerous when they were unconscious than when they were awake. Vergil was a light sleeper who startled from the slightest noise and slashed at anything or anyone that got too close, while Dante was sensitive to sudden movements, talked and gesticulated in his dreams, and had bitten Nero twice. Spending the night with the twins less than five meters away was akin to trying to meditate in a pool of rabid hamsters.

The Devil May Cry shop was only a five hour drive away, but Nero had called it a day when Nico's eyelids had begun to close on their own. They had parked near a forest, making camp in the middle of a small clearing; Nero had fashioned makeshift beds out of ferns and was graced with a few seconds of admiration from the kids — excited praise from Dante, an impressed look from Vergil — before they resumed their normal brattiness.

One last night, Nero thought. One last night, and then they would reach the shop and finally, he could claim the real Dante’s bed as his own.

As if feeling his usurper’s ambition, Dante woke him up first. The boy had somehow crawled toward him, still in his sleeping bag, and had grabbed one of his fingers; it'd have been kinda cute without Dante's inhuman strength. Nero could feel his knuckles grinding in their sockets, but he didn't even try to disengage himself. The last time he had attempted to pull away from a sleeping Dante, the kid had moaned with heart-wrenching distress before biting him to the bone.

Nero was trying to fall back asleep, despite the discomfort, when he heard a rustle from Vergil's direction. The kid was approaching slowly, trying his utmost to be stealthy. What the hell was he planning?  Coming from Vergil, Nero expected anything including the raising of a kid-sized Qliphoth. 

“Dante,” Vergil whispered.

Dante’s grip around Nero’s finger relaxed.

“Vergil?” Dante mumbled, still half-asleep.

“Shh!”

Silence fell, only broken by the faraway whispers of sylvan life — branches creaking, leaves rustling, beasts running about in the darkness. Nero could almost feel Vergil’s inquisitive stare, looking for any sign of awareness.

“What are you doing, Vergil?” Dante murmured.

A whisper of fabric betrayed Vergil’s movements as he rose. “Follow me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to wake _Nero_ up. He’ll just interfere with our business.”

The rancor in Vergil’s voice was palpable. _Well, fuck you too, kid_.

“I’m not leaving,” Dante said with unsteady resolution.

“I’m not asking you to leave, Dante. I promised I’d stay, so I will.”

“… Okay, then.”

The two children walked a few meters away. It would have been a pain a few months ago, when Nero’s senses had been limited by his humanity, but now, he could hear with surprising acuity regardless of whether or not he called upon his demon. He wondered if it would become permanent with time. If Dante was always that aware behind the veneer of crafted carelessness that he would take on as an adult.

"What do you _want_?” Dante demanded when they stopped. The boy sounded tense, on edge. A microsecond away from angry.

“Shh, lower your voice! You’re so _loud_ , Dante!”

“Well, if you don't like it, just act like normal and don’t talk to me, then!” Dante’s shouted whisper cracked on the last syllables. Was it going to end in a fight? Probably. They were, after all, the Sparda twins.

There was another pause. Nero didn’t dare open his eyes.

“Dante, will you leave me?” Vergil asked finally. There was a quiet, stiff dignity in his tone, like he was somehow demeaning himself by breaching the topic.

“ _What_?”

“You heard what I said,” Vergil snapped.

“The hell? You’re the one who wanted to leave _me_!” Grief and anger were at war in Dante’s voice; they both won.

“I never said that!” Vergil protested, taken aback.

“You — you _showed it_! You don’t talk to me and you don’t look at me and you — you hate me! I — I fucking hate _you_!”

So much for whispering, but Vergil seemed in no state to care anymore. “So you _do_ hate me,” he hissed with equal parts venom and grief.

Nero bit back a groan of frustration and moved to rise, ready to shake both dumbass kids and force them to be honest with each other.

“Wait,” V murmured near him.

Nero almost jumped out of his skin; he’d completely forgotten about the other man’s presence.

“What the hell, V?”

“Leave them to themselves. I… want to see if they can figure it out without your intervention.”

“Why?” Nero demanded, turning back toward the demon.

V’s gaze slid to the side and, for a moment, it looked like he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he stared straight at Nero.

“I want to see if they have a chance of getting along on their own.”

“That makes no sense.”

“This is an opportunity to know whether their enmity is built in their very souls, rather than born from circumstance. At the top of the Temen-ni-gru, they were adults — men driven by ideals forged from years of battle. Right now, they are children. It’s… a chance to learn if… agreement could ever be possible. If the brothers of blood can ever find peace together.”

Nero didn’t understand.

“You got along with your brother when — before the attack, though, right?”

“Neither of us thought we did. He exasperated me; I thought him childish and aimless.”

V looked at the two kids who whispered-shouted at each other in the shadows, so absorbed in the other that they had forgotten the world outside of themselves.

“Now,” he said softly, “I realize how much we loved each other.”

His voice was steeped in sorrowful resignation. Nero rubbed his nape, searching for the right words to say. He'd always wished so desperately for a sibling, someone to be his family, that he couldn't imagine wasting this chance with petty infighting; he could understand, though, the regret felt from its loss.

“Well, Dante and Vergil looked like they got along before they left to the Underworld. They were smiling. Relaxed. In sync.” Nero remembered the way they’d hit him with the same damn strength and timing. “I think that love was still there after all those years, and that it just needed—” _a good punch in their dumb asshole faces_ “—a push, someone to tell them where to shove all their anger and hatred and whatever.”

V’s eyes widened slightly and then he smiled at Nero with genuine, appreciative warmth. Nero felt himself blush. _Fuck_.

“A-Anyway,” he added gruffly, “just… As soon as they get the swords out, I’m grabbing them, okay?”

“Remember, violence is natural to them.”

“Yeah, but not to _me_ , so nobody’s massacring anybody on my watch.”

V pinched his lips. Nero rolled his eyes with a surge of exasperation, but Dante shouted before he could act on it.

“We’re _brothers,_ Vergil! Mom’s dead and I should have _you_! We should be together as a family but you’re not here!” Dante screamed, choking back angry tears. “You’re not with me, you’re not acting like my brother anymore, and I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I don’t deserve it, nobody deserves to be hurt that much it, and— and you suck! You fucking suck! _I hate you!_ ”

Nero turned back to the boys, ready to intervene should they come to blows. Vergil stood stunned for a moment, and then he looked toward the adults. The moment he met Nero’s gaze, he jumped desperately onto it as an escape route. “Dante, you woke them up —”

Dante punched him. Nero couldn’t blame him, though he still rose before V grabbed him.

“They haven’t taken their swords out!”

“Tell that to Vergil’s ear last time —”

“You gave me your word! Wait. Just a while longer.”

Nero actually hadn’t promised anything, but he allowed V to pull him back. Dante had thrown his brother to the ground and was pummeling him, clumsy blows fueled by rage. In a perfect world, that should have been the moment when Vergil recognized that he had been a cruel dumbass and let his little brother vent his anger with noble stoicism. Demon kids being demon kids, however, the boy defended himself and then some until he had Dante pinned beneath him, unable to attack. Dante thrashed wildly, almost dislodging his older brother, but Vergil managed to keep him down, grabbing at his wrists.

“I’m doing this for your own good, Dante.” Vergil tried so hard to speak calmly, and failed so spectacularly; something raw and trembling tore at his careful enunciation. “You need to learn how to survive alone!”

“I don’t fucking need it!” Dante snapped. “I don’t need to be alone! I have _you_! I would never be lonely if you weren’t being so fucking — so fucking sucky!”

Until now, Nero had assumed Dante was the more emotional twin. Right now, though, it was Vergil who trembled on the edge of tears while his twin bristled like steel under pressure, struggling in his grip with hurt, imperious anger.

“You don’t understand, Dante!”

“I don’t and I don’t fucking want to! Mom’s _dead_ , Vergil—” The steel broke briefly, then rage prevailed anew. “She’s dead and I need my brother — I need _you_! There’s no fucking reason why I don’t have you by my side right now! There's no demons here, there’s just _your —_ your _fucking_ idea to throw me away! I don’t want ‘my own good,’ I want you!”

Vergil’s face was rigid with fear that bordered on terror, pale irises shining like brittle diamonds, and Nero didn’t want to understand why. Dante’s eyes were colorless glass shards, all sharp edges; he pulled on Vergil’s arms and his brother resisted, briefly, before yielding completely.

After a while, Vergil embraced Dante back, burying his nose in the curve of his little brother’s shoulder, holding him like a lifeline as he cried.

Then and only then, Dante breathed out choking sobs into his twin’s hair.

***

They weren’t talking about last night. Silence and violence were the Sparda way to deal with emotional issues, and since the twins were currently eight years old, Nero felt inclined to forgive them.

V and Nero had pretended to return to slumber, giving some space to the twins. After a while, Vergil and Dante had crawled into a single sleeping bag to sleep together, intertwined like the small, needy monkeys they were. For the first night since they had begun their odd journey together, the twins had slept through the night. They rose together in the morning, and Dante poked at Nero to wake him up while Vergil radiated hostility at his side.

One hour later, they sat sulking across from each other after yet another bicker about breakfast.

“That is their normal behavior,” V explained when Nero gestured at the utter dumbassery that was his family.

“ _Normal?_ ”

“As you saw, Vergil answered Dante’s provocations, unlike before. They have reconciled.”

“And they show it by _fighting_?”

“Such is their way,” V replied with quiet amusement.

Nero sighed loudly, both relieved and exasperated. He caught the shadow of a lopsided smile on V’s lips and tried not to feel flustered.

“Shower’s free!” Nico called, rubbing her hair with a towel as she pushed the bathroom's door open with her knee.

V rose. “I’ll take it.”

“Want a change of clothes? Can’t help noticing you’ve been wearing the same get-up since we’ve met.”

The demon breathed a soft laugh. “I’m… afraid I can’t wear those shorts as flatteringly as you do. Don’t worry, I intend to summon my outfit.”

“Yeah, you’re quite a few hamburgers away from filling ‘em, but I got a few spare overalls. So you've got summoning abilities, huh? Show me!”

V raised an eyebrow at her. “I am not a prized monkey.”

“C'mon, V!” She argued, twisting the towel around her hair like some kind of askew queen's hat. “I'll owe ya one. You'll get a favor from the best smithy in the country! That's expensive, y’know.”

V smirked, amused at her carefree pride. “Very well.”

Then he began to unlace his corset as if it were the most natural thing in the world and Nero's heart slammed up against his ribs.

“The-there are kids here!” Nero stammered, sharply attracting the attention of the aforementioned kids — an inquisitive glance from Vergil, who was reading one of Nico’s tattoos magazines on the couch, and a curious, bright look from Dante, who’d been crawling under said couch.

V stared at him, studying his expression. “I’m merely taking my vest off. It is hardly obscene.”

“I— Nico!” Nero hissed. “Why the fuck do you have to request such weird shit?!”

“Boo-hoo, someone’s just jealous they didn’t ask first.”

Nero felt heat explode across his face. Nico’s eyes widened.

Nero had taken on giant statues; magic-wielding colossus, blood-sucking insects; beings made of fire and shadow; as well as a multitude of entities that most mortals could only encounter in their worst nightmares. _This_ monster, he was going to fucking _flee_.

“Well, have fun studying demon dress-up while I shower,” he snapped hastily.

He slammed the door shut before Nico could call him a coward.

He hadn’t thought about taking a change of clothes.

Fuck.

He set the water to freezing before he stepped in the shower. The cold made him jump out his skin, but took care of his unwanted arousal. His far-too vivid imagination could go to hell for all he cared. More unsettlingly, why the hell was his libido not impaired by the “half of Vergil” part of the equation? Was it his demon instincts? _Fuck_ demon instincts. _Fuck everything._ V could do a striptease for all Nero cared. He wasn't even that beautiful, just... bony and pale and... Stuff. There was a slow deliberateness in his every move, indomitable will and pride in the way he carried himself. And now he was undressing outside, unveiling the black whorls that swirled on the white planes of his thin body and— Okay, Nero needed more cold water. Much more.

He was scrubbing his hair when Nico shouted through the door. “Nero! Trish is on the phone!”

“Tell her to call back later!”

“She found a way to contact the twins!”

Cursing, Nero rinsed summarily, grabbed a towel and barged out of the bathroom. Leaning against the opposite wall, still half-naked — _fuck_ — and looking just as good as Nero had imagined him to be — _fuuuuck_ — V stared at him. Nico turned from the driver’s seat to wriggle her eyebrows at him, smirking.

“So, who’s indecent in front of the children now, huh?”

Nero rolled his eyes, gesturing toward the phone that she held. “I have a towel. Gimme that.”

Nico’s smile widened. She stepped forward, fatal intent carved across her grinning face. Nero narrowed his eyes at the sight and adopted a defensive stance.

“Pull that towel and you die.”

“Bullshit. You can’t live without your fave weaponsmith!”

“We’ll see about that, if you don’t hand me that phone right now, you shitty driver.”

“ _Shitty?!_ Who managed to get that van in and out of the tightest places on Earth just for _your_ needy ass?”

Firmly grabbing his towel with one hand, Nero attempted to snatch the phone from her grip and she recoiled, cackling as she held it as far away as she could. He growled in frustration, rolling his eyes at her utter puerility.

“Nico!”

“Trish is a proper lady, can’t let a half-naked guy talk to her! She’d be all shocked and betrayed.”

He was about to make a second, more serious attempt at grabbing the phone when his towel was pulled with enough unexpected strength that it slipped from his hands.

Nero froze. Nico’s gaze immediately traveled downwards, because _of course_ it did, and her gaping mouth widened into a grin as she gave a wolf whistle.

“Woooow, Neroooo! Sure as hell didn’t know you were hiding _that!_ ”

“What the FUCK!” Nero blurted out, turning to catch the thief.

The kids were already running — and _Vergil_ was the one holding the towel, snickering as his brother erupted with laughter.

The little bastard.

Okay, the brats were _dead_.

He went after Vergil first and the boy had obviously expected it, climbing on the fridge to take the high ground. Nero didn’t hesitate for a second before he snapped his wings out, launching at Vergil. This time, he didn't hold out; the kid yelped when he was grabbed, throwing the towel to his brother.

“Dante!”

Nero’s gaze whipped to Dante, who was running to the door. _Fuck_. He skid full speed toward the boy and managed to tackle him, but Vergil took advantage of his distraction to slip free and elbow him in the nape.

Nero felt something crunch and the world dimmed, briefly, with a flash of pain and nausea. Nico cried out a panicked, “Oh _FUCK_!” which was a small consolation. Dante wriggled out from under him, partly pulled by his brother. Nero reacted by sheer force of will and grabbed at their ankles, swiping the floor out from under them.

“Now you’re going to get it,” he promised in a voice that sounded wrecked even to his ears.

They froze, the both of them, and Nero felt the switch from the kids’ giddy amusement to terror.

There was nothing left to do but tickle Dante with his human hands.

The kid burst into laughter, reflexively hitting Nero back as he squirmed and flailed wildly, kicking his legs, and Vergil relaxed a beat before he launched at Nero's face.

It took entirely too long, and was an exercise in both human and demonic self-control, but Nero finally got his towel back, if not his dignity. Briefly exhausted from the roughhousing, the boys were a panting mess on the floor.

When Nero turned toward Nico, he found that she had grabbed the camera, and was filming with the biggest grin. He scowled at her and snatched it.

“We’re destroying that reel.”

“No way! I was startled when kiddo here kinda broke yer neck, so there are a few secs missing, but this is the best thing I’ve ever filmed,” Nico crowed. “Can’t wait to show it to — fuck, no! Don’t open it! Nero! I forbid ya! _Nero!_ I ain’t ever gonna make any new devil breakers for ya if you do that!”

He took the reel out and crushed it between his hands while looking her straight in the eyes. She crossed her arms and sulked.

“Don’t talk to me _ever again_.”

“I should be the one saying that! Why the fuck would you film someone naked?”

She froze for a second and burst out laughing. Nero felt his ears burn when he realized what had just flown out of his mouth.

“May I attempt something?” V asked.

Nero blinked at him — he’d completely forgotten about the demon. V smiled lightly at him and touched his shoulder — long, bony fingers still marked by tattoos that should have disappeared with his familiars. His skin was a bit colder than a human’s — or maybe it was simply that Nero was far too warm.

The young demon hunter felt a strange sensation, and watched as his skin effervesced beneath V’s touch. When the light faded, Nero found himself suddenly wearing a tank top and tight dark pants. V’s smile turned into a satisfied smirk.

“That should help for now.”

“Amazing!” Nico gaped. “How does it _work_ for others? Is it like, yer depositing part of yerself on Nero? Like a second skin? Maybe more like shedding, since ya didn’t feel anythin’ when I poked your discarded coat —”

“I just had to touch him,” V answered while Nero attempted to recover from the mental image Nico had inflicted upon him. “That said, we have a phone conversation to return to.”

“Yeah,” Nero replied too loudly.

He realized that he was still holding his towel, useless over the jeans, and dropped it to pool on the floor.

He wasn’t wearing any underwear.

He tried very hard not to think about that fact. V probably had forgotten, or could not manifest two layers of clothes. But the feeling of fabric rubbing over —

No.

Trish had already hung up when Nero finally grabbed the phone with far too much enthusiasm. He called her back, and she picked up instantly.

“What happened?” The question might have suggested that she was concerned, but like always, her voice was all smooth assurance.

“Kids just being brats, don’t worry. So. What do we have to do to get in touch with them?”

“First, a warning: Dante wrote in the margins that the whole thing will ‘fucking blow up in your face’ if your target is dead. He struck it later and added, ‘or brainwashed enough.’”

“They’re not dead and they’re not mindfucked,” he cut in.

“Hmm.” A conciliatory sound. “Still, keep Nico and the kids away. You will need a few things: blood to kickstart the ritual, demonic energy to keep the communication open — basically, you’re going to be its battery. You will also need an object precious to your target or a part of their body — their saliva, their hair, whatever.”

Finding an object dear to Vergil was easy enough: he’d left Nero his book, after all. But as for Dante...

“Think that this _Slap & Tickle _trash magazine is dear enough to Dante?”

Trish chuckled. “You can try right now with Vergil's book. Meanwhile, I can bring their mother’s portrait.”

“Try? Right now? We can be there in a few hours.”

“If Vergil’s still with Dante, he’ll give us information about their whereabouts. Let's not damage the shop by possibly blowing it up. Call me as soon as you're done.” Trish’s tone was even, pleasantly careless, but Nero could hear the impatience behind it.

“Okay. What should we do?”

She gave him a quick recap. Apparently, all he had to do was draw a few occult symbols that were thankfully familiar to Nico, read a few minutes' worth of some weird language that sounded like it was insulting the universe’s mother, shed blood, endure the power drain of the ritual, and profit.

Nero felt up to the task.

He was not worried about whether it would succeed or not. Dante and Vergil were _fine_. Dante was the strongest man in the world and Vergil was the one who’d almost kicked his ass so, obviously, they were okay. Probably just chilling in the Underworld, probably fighting and laughing about him, the deadweight they had left behind. Or maybe they were spending their time laughing over the absurd idea that they could ever become a functional family. Nero didn’t really care, as long as they were alright.

He was not all that worried about talking to his father, either. Of course, it was going to be awkward, but he had no reason to be anxious. It was _Vergil_ that should be on edge, not him. Of the two of them, Nero was not the deadbeat father, the arm tearer, or the world destroyer.

Who was he kidding? Nero was a wreck, but he’d get through it. Nico and V were gracious enough to ignore his nervousness as he explained the whole process. The weaponsmith cheerfully appointed herself as head of operations and dragged the others outside to prepare for the ritual.

“What can I do?” Nero asked Nico while she rummaged in her workshop. Behind him, Dante tried to sneak away with one of the prototypes Devil Breaker she kept around. Nero distractedly snatched it back, indifferent to the kid’s indignant protests.

Nico threw Nero a glance. “Yer resting in the van. We need our demonic battery in tip-top shape for the ritual.”

“I’m not letting you do all the work!”

Nico rolled her eyes. “We’re two adults and two lil’monsters, we’ll survive. Anyway, ya got to change clothes, remember? It feels too weird to see you well-dressed. That’s outta character! It’ll distract me and I can’t work properly with ya around, so you stay here until I call ya. Manager’s order!”

Nero tried to protest, but Nico had found a pretext to force him to rest and she was sticking it to it. Letting her care for him felt weird — and kind of… nice. He’d needed the rest, too, as well as the solitude, and it was a perfect opportunity to call Kyrie without having to worry about sounding sappy in front of someone else.

It was good hearing Kyrie. She didn’t even know the kids, but she was so happy they’d made up — so kind, so pure, far too much for a quarter-demon wreck like him. When Nero asked her about the news, she understood his hidden plea and lulled him with inconsequential tales from home. When he hung up, he was feeling only eighty percent distressed, which he considered a significant improvement.

“You don’t like your father,” Vergil said from the sofa. He’d snuck into the van during the phone conversation, a small demonic presence that buzzed at the back of Nero’s mind.

“Aren’t you supposed to be helping the others?”

“Not answering means I'm right.”

“No.” _Yes. I don’t know. “_ It’s complicated.”

“You hate me,” the child stated calmly, as if talking about the weather. He made a big show of pretend-reading the book on his lap, but he wasn’t flipping the pages.

Nero stared at him.

“Are you kidding? _You_ 're the one who hates _me_! You’ve been baring your teeth at me since we’ve met!”

“You were suspicious.”

“And so were _you_ , kid.”

“You don’t treat Dante the same way. You’re hostile towards me and V. You’re always glaring at me and you tense when V touches you.” The kid was as perceptive in some matters as he was blind in others, thank the fucking gods. Nero was _not_ ready for a talk about his attraction to V.

“Did my adult self abandon you?” Vergil asked, looking directly at him for the first time.

“What the _hell_?”

The boy shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t want a wife and children, so I figured he wouldn’t either.”

Well, now that just hurt. _He’s just a kid_ , Nero forced himself to remember. He doesn't understand.

“He just— he didn’t know I existed.”

Vergil stared at him as if he was stupid.

“Obviously, he — _I_ would be aware if I had launched into the process of making a baby. It takes _nine months_ and the woman’s body visibly changes during gestation.”

He spoke with the regal confidence of a young nerd having read a few paragraphs on the topic and, probably, badly misunderstood them. Nero was _not_ explaining the birds and the bees to his father, nor the concept of one-night-stands.

“Trust me, kid, he didn't know. Sometimes, you're unaware that the uh — the baby-making stuff has worked until the end, and he didn’t exactly stick around. He had to travel for a long time.”

The boy seemed to ponder the revelation. “I see.”

Nero mentally breathed a sigh of relief.

“Right. Wanna go help the others with me?”

Vergil threw him a sharp glance, pinching his lips. Apparently, though, Nero was off the hook for today, because the kid looked back to his book instead of questioning him further.

“They don’t need me and I have a chapter to finish.”

Maybe Vergil was going to read a few more encyclopedia articles about this mysterious baby-making thing to try to poke holes into Nero’s ridiculous assertion that a man didn’t have to marry and stay at his wife’s side to have children. The young hunter rapidly went through his mental inventory of all the inappropriate materials that the kid could get his hands on; the van was quite safe apart from Nico’s collection of porn, which she kept under lock and key.

“Have fun, kid,” he called before leaving.

Vergil grunted in answer.

“Yo!” Nico grinned at Nero when she saw him. They’d mowed down a circle on the ground so that they could paint occult symbols on the naked earth; a number of bone-like antennas were planted in a pentagram, emitting strange energy. “We were waitin’ for ya. Ready to be our livin’, breathin’ battery?”

“Does absence of consent matter?”

“Nope,” she answered cheerfully. “C’mere!”

Rolling his eyes, he advanced.

“What should I do?”

She threw him a sheathed knife.

“You cut yourself and bleed while I read the incantation.”

“You’re staying nearby? Trish said it might explode.”

She waved dismissively at him.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t ya worry about my beautiful ass, I’ll be okay.”

“Nico, I’m serious —”

“So am I. You can’t cut yourself and read in an even tone, so lemme. I’m taking my protective gear. If it blows up, you just have to run faster than the explosion and cover me!”

That confidence was probably the most glowing compliment that Nico had ever given him. Right now, though, Nero could have gone without it.

“… Okay. We’re starting. V, make sure the kids stay in the van.”

“Hey!” Dante protested, outraged.

“No explosion for ya!” Nico exclaimed all too happily.

“But I wanna see you doing magic!”

“You can! From the van.”

The boy sulked but yielded. Nero stepped into the center of the pentacle, holding V’s book.

“Put it on the ground. Now, drip blood around it to create a circle, and think about Vergil.”

Okay, that seemed simple enough. Gritting his teeth, Nero cut his wrist — and watched in consternation as the wound almost instantly closed.

Why was half of his current existence based on forcing himself to bleed for others? Was the universe trying to tell him something with this sanguine metaphor?

Tearing open his arm was not so painful compared to what Nero was used to, but the repetition of it — trying to fight against his regenerative factor — was a pain. Thinking about Vergil while doing it was one more challenge, because his father was the kind of topic that he preferred to breach when he could brood alone.

Then, sooner than expected, the ritual began to drain his energy — a dull, heavy pressure that quickened the pulse of blood in his veins. Nero had expected at least some cool special effect — rays of light as the sigils absorbed his life force, ominous sparkling, the works — but he felt only the weight of weakness settling in his muscles. Around him, the bone-like antennas oscillated like insects’ legs.

His demon raged and roared within him, but Nero forced it under control. This was for Dante — for Vergil, for his _family._ He tried to beat the beast down, to focus on the cold asshole Lady and Trish had described when he had asked about his father — a proud, willful, power-obsessed man with one single goal. Was Vergil still so fixated on strength, now? Or had V humanized him?

These fucking wounds closed so fast, forcing him to cut again and again, sending flashes of heat and irritation through him as his demon thrashed with growing anger against what it saw as senseless self-destruction. He could feel himself weakening. Trish had been right to say that he’d serve as a living battery for the ritual, but he hadn’t expected it to be this intense. On the ground, the sigils glowed a noxious, pulsating blue.

Finishing the circle of blood was a relief. Trying to ignore the confusion and rage that clawed at him from within, Nero tried to focus on what he knew firsthand about his father.

There was V, Vergil’s humanity: a study of lopsided smiles and quiet aloofness; iron willpower coiled in a weakened frame, held together by pride.

(Nero's instincts were howling, his guts churning with rage and the sickening tinge of an old fear that he hadn’t felt since Fortuna’s events. He was allowing himself to be drained and the demon didn’t _understand_ —)

There was the devil called Urizen: an empty husk of ambition left with nothing but one single, terrible desire. Power cut from heart, Vergil's sacrifice and devotion.

(Nero suddenly triggered, his wings clawing at nothing as phantom pain raced through his arms. He was getting weaker and it would be so fucking easy to just step out and escape this, but he was stupid and human—)

There was Vergil as a child: cold and haughty, blunt and terrified, pushing his brother away while wanting him forever at his call.

(It hurt. Nero was weak, he was _choosing_ to be weakened for others and he hated himself for it—)

Finally, there was Vergil as an adult: pale, cold and lethal, deceivingly calm, elegantly sarcastic.

Something hot and tense twisted in Nero’s stomach: resentment and the hateful need to be acknowledged —

(Nero's instincts told him to escape the pain, to set aside this foolishness and take advantage of the fact that he was alone and powerful and free from competition, if only he stopped stupidly _bleeding out all of his energy_ —)

Suddenly, the drain subsided to a drumming ache beneath his skull. Nero felt it before he saw it: the opening of the communication line.

They’re fine. Elation pulsed in his veins, relief prickling at the corners of his eyes; he rubbed at them, grinning, as light and shadow started to coalesce into an image before him.

Or rather...

 _Images_ , plural.

Faintly, Nero remembered what Nico had once told him: Dante had probably been fed blood by the Qliphoth because it had mistaken him for Urizen. Even half of Vergil was still similar enough to his brother that the twins could be mixed up by a tree — no wonder the ritual had also confused them, summoning the two.

The _many_ two.

Directly ahead of Nero were the kids, frozen in their struggle to get a better view from the van’s windows, gaping in astonishment.

On his right, there was a younger version of Vergil, twenty-something at most, standing under a storm-wracked, unnatural sky. Alongside him was Dante at the same age. They were a gory mess, convered with various shades of inhuman ichor; two identical bloodstained faces stared at Nero with a mix of surprise and battle-ready alertness.

On the left stood Dante and Vergil as teenagers, wide-eyed glances from two separate images — the first apparently roused from a nap under a tree, the second standing in a darkly-lit library.

“What the _FUCK_ ,” Nero said. It was less of a conversation opener than an insult to the universe.

Of course, the two older Vergils immediately attempted to attack him.

One of the fuckers had the Yamato.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuses for the slow update schedule for that chapter, except that it was a pain to write (demon children and quarter demons have a lot of feelings and my tired brain struggled to write them all). Thank you very much for reading and sticking with me so far! The end is slowly approaching ~


End file.
